Avengers of Mass Effect
by dutchsoldier
Summary: A what if story, Steve, Tony and Bucky challenge Thanos to a fight between them and him and 2 of his champions, for the fight they are transported to another dimension, will the avengers win, and take down Thanos? Or will they be left behind for dead by him and never be able to save/avenge their beloved planet? Is currently undergoing rewriting.
1. Prologue part 1

Avengers of mass effect

 **If you just want to read a story and not me talking about things, skip until the bold lettering.**

This story will be a mix of mass effect and the marvel cinematic universe, with the story for marvel following the movie canon until shortly before infinity war starts, with the only change being that I do not know for sure if Loki was under mind control because of the glowing blue eyes in the first avengers movie, in here he was under mind control.

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For mass effect it will be changed up a bit, mostly following canon, but instead of leaving the civilians of new colonies nearly defenceless this time around they will have a bunker with a slightly below dreadnought level shield to house the population of an under attack colony, since after they found alien ruins any reasonable military commander would conclude that there was probably something out there that had killed the beings that had used the outpost that the ruins originally were, and that there was a small chance of either them or their descendants still being around.

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This also means that the systems alliance will have some more ships and a rapid response fleet, since they are actually trying to be as prepared as possible to a threat they are suspecting is out there. This is the first non-poem fanfiction story I have written in years, so if anyone has suggestions about better writing styles etc, please message me or post a review, just please use good arguments and do not just flame me.

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Edit 09-02-2019: I'm now rewriting the story and have finished with this chapter, I hope its better then before and if it isn't very good yet, please post either a review or send me a personal message giving me some tips on how to make it better, thank you for taking the time to read this.

Disclaimer: I do not own either mass effect or the marvel cinematic universe, if I did I would not be writing this story, but instead probably try to buy all the x-men movie rights and probably pull a Stan Lee and enter myself into every movie in some way, shape or form.

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Would also make it in mass effect that the player can actually get a cure for the Quarians low immune system by the end of mass effect 2. I always found it strange how they could essentially re-awaken the dead with all their memories and most if not all of their capabilities intact but somehow they couldn't simply mix up a medicine for low resistance to disease by researching into the resistances of another species?

I mean you could just hire a few hundred down on their luck Turians, use research into their immune systems to create a cure that would bring the Quarian ones up to roughly half-way through the current Quarian immune systems and that of the Turians, and you're done. Then give this and a small region of a planet you're not doing anything with anyways to the Quarians in exchange for them joining into a mutual defence pact and a research sharing pact with you.

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And bam, you have the loyalty of a race that managed to do the upkeep for a 50.000 ship navy for 300 years with barely any resources, no dockyards, not even a planet of their own. Meaning that you now have a militarily powerful ally that will come to back you up no matter what, large numbers of skilled engineers willing to work for not too high of a pay and lastly also the reputation as a saviour of people with anyone except for the Batarians. But who really cares about the Batarians they are a second rate power anyways.

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I would also change it so that every single named character that remains on the ship for multiple missions that doesn't have a good reason to not be interested in you (A: is already in a relationship, B: madly in love with somebody, C: is related to you, D: age difference is just way too large, E: you're not the gender they have interest in) can be romanced. Meaning that in Mass Effect 1 you could also romance Tali'Zorah or Garrus Vakarian, etc. However as said before this all isn't a thing and I do not own either the game or the movies.

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 **Summary: I do not own either marvel or mass effect, because I am a schoolteacher and not a good writer or businessman. Nor a major shareholder of whomever currently owns Mass Effect.**

'' Talk'' is regular oral communication/talking out loud

 _'Talk'_

Is mental communication such as telepathy, or mentally connected interfaces such as when seeing digital reports or long-range communication through the mind of an A.I.

 **'Talk'**

Is mental communication in which one side is domination/commanding the other, such as Thanos with the Chitauri or people enslaved by the Infinity stones.

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 **  
''Talk''** Is oral communication performed by a being that is calling an large amounts of supernatural power at that moment or who's words are currently infused with such power (Loki casting a defensive spell requiring near all of his power to protect an entire city, somebody declaring something to enter a supernatural transformation, etc.)

Planet: Earth, Location: Wakanda, date: unknown

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The battle for earth had begun, but even with all the preparation they had done, it just wasn't enough. The Chitauri and pirates that Thanos had brought with him were slowly overwhelming Earth's defenders, especially since what few space based defences the earth had, were long since destroyed, with only a few mutants, the last remaining anti-orbital guns and less than a dozen space capable Iron Legion suits still able to keep the fight in space going, however to little effect and with extreme difficulty.

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While planet-side the more capable and motivated defenders were killing 5 or 6 attackers for every single one of their own even with the disadvantage of having little to no air coverage because of the enemies control of the orbit, it just wouldn't be enough, not when the Chitauri alone already outnumbered the defenders 7 to 1, let alone with the added pirates, mercenaries and many others that had flocked to join Thanos's invasion force.

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Governments and other organisations everywhere were pulling every single last one of their tricks out into the open, with tanks with laser canons, wet-water ships with Railguns installed on them, Nuclear Weapons launchers sized down enough to be used by foot-soldiers, plasma anti-tank rifles, super powered mutant teams, elite soldiers wearing power armour suits and A.I. Commanded drone legions all being thrown against the waves of enemies.

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Though Thanos's forces were feeling it badly with their losses numbering at well over 100 million by now, it was just never enough and nearly every place where the Earth's defenders had anti-orbital weapons installed had been destroyed by this point, either through orbital fire or just by the enemy dropping millions of soldiers on the location and having them swarm the local defenders.

The only area were the defenders were truly winning had been Wakanda, were the attackers were met by a defence far stronger than they had ever expected, including anti-orbital weapons far more advanced than those on the remainder of the planet. However, this only lasted until Thanos personally came to lead the attack force against them, using the partially completed infinity gauntlet to weaken the defenders, which got worse after he took the mind-stone from Vision by force.

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Steve POV

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We had stood here with all this power, this army beyond anything I had ever seen before, and it was still not enough. All around me Wakandan soldiers were dying, most of the avengers were heavily injured or dead, with only me, Bucky, T'challa and Tony still able to fight in the nearby area, Vision had died from having his forehead ripped off when Thanos took the mind-stone from him.

Bruce/Hulk had lost an arm and a leg when holding off hundreds of attackers while the medics tried to get the injured behind him to safety, Wanda was down from losing a battle of minds when she tried to invade Thanos's head, Natasha had been forced to retreat from her position to rescue and defend a group of civilians that the invaders had captured somehow, Thor was unconscious and possible dying after attempting to face Thanos and a small army on his own to give Asgardian civilians the time to retreat.

All others fates besides that of Sam were unknown to him, due to them having been in other areas of the war, and Sam had been shot down and killed while he was trying to give Natalia's group some air coverage. He needed to do something, needed to take Thanos away from this battle, then they would stand a chance... wait Thanos was extremely prideful, he would never refuse a challenge to his skills, and if he could get the monster to move the fight to an area where the infinity gauntlet had little to no power, the defenders here would truly stand a chance against the invaders.

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But how would he get Thanos to commit to that? This all went through his mind in barely more than a second while he was fighting his way towards Thanos, slicing his enemies open or slamming them away with the vibranium semi-shields that had been gifted to him by T'Challa's research team.

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Bucky was moving towards Thanos, seemingly having an idea similar to mine, Tony was currently giving a group of heavy Wakandan mechanized infantry some air support by raining down energy blasts on a group of pirates. I sent a com signal to both them, and T'Challa who was somewhere I couldn't see, but still commanding his personal bodyguards as far as I know.

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''Bucky, Stark, Panther, I might have an idea that would remove Thanos from this battle, and give the army time to overcome his army, which will degrade into a un-organised rabble again once he's out of the picture'' Tony replied ''Anything would be better then what we have now, we will lose most certainly if we continue fighting like this.'' An ''It would assist us greatly.'' from T'Challa and ''Cutting of the head of the snake will only work for a while punk, but something is better than nothing'' from Bucky.

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Ok then, let's hope this works out. ''The plan is for either me, Bucky or Stark to challenge Thanos to a 3 versus 3 duel in a location where the gauntlet will have less power, and get this to happen by heavily suggesting the fact that he needs the gauntlet because of his weakness, have his pride overtake his capability to think strategically.

This should allow us to hold him off long enough for the higher quality, morale and organisation of our army here to turn the tide against his army, potentially forcing him to retreat when he returns and giving troops all around the continent a defendable fall-back area.''

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''You do know that this will be a suicide mission Captain.'' I sigh, thinking of the woman I love, but deciding that if I don't do this, then she won't have a future anyways so I will have to do it. ''I do, and if either of you want to back out you can, but it is the only way I see that can give everyone an actual chance against Thanos.''

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I heard Bucky say ''With you till the end of the line punk'', and Tony's reaction ''Let's go out with a show old man.'' I nod to them gratefully as best as I can while also still fighting the enemy and start moving towards Thanos's position while saying ''Even with all that has happened these past years, I wanted you to know it's been an honour serving with you gentlemen and all others that were here. Let's do this.''

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Thanos POV

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Hmm this is more difficult than I had expected, even now that I already have the mind stone they are still fighting back very strongly and taking down more of my troops then the other way around. Good, I want them to fight, to be strong enough to challenge me. If I came here without the gauntlet, as I had originally planned, they might even have killed me and my army before long.

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I truly need to keep some of them around as slave soldiers, even if I can use the gauntlet to erase things from existence, there are beings that cannot be harmed by its power, and I would need soldiers like these Avengers to fight those to keep the Universe in balance. Hmm might need to show them properly how strong I am, so that after this is over they will not keep resisting until the end, but instead after I bring proper balance to life across the universe some of them will join me.

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Hmm but how to go about this... ''Thanos you coward! Face me like the warrior God you claim to be, and not by hiding behind lines and using that gauntlet of yours to even the odds even while having dozens at your side against one of ours!''. I sense an opportunity here. ''That is an interesting challenge, you what did my minion call you again when the two of you first met? Man out of time? Still that does sound like a wonderful opportunity, what do you suggest?''

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If I actually want this to work I should probably have my forces withdraw a bit through a mental command and create some space between the groups. **'All forces disengage from combat and do a fighting withdrawal to 15 local meters away from the enemy main line. I am going to face the champions of our enemies in personal combat to demoralize them.'  
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Steve POV

Ok so far so good. '' You pride yourself on being the strongest there is right? You see yourself as some kind of warrior God of destruction or death right? And you are trying to court a being that thinks of itself as being death made into flesh? Then should you not, while invading us, challenge our champions to a one on one fight with yourself, and have the fight somewhere were the gauntlet doesn't do all the fighting for you, but you instead actually have to fight us?''

I hope that wasn't laying it on too much, this is pretty much our only chance to win this war and it needed to go just right. ''I accept your proposal human, though I would like to make it a bit more interesting, 3 against 3, you and two soldiers of your choice against me and two of my soldiers in a pocket dimension, is that a deal man out of time?'' Oh how did I hate that title, but still it was good enough.

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''You have yourself a deal Mad Titan.'' Shit shouldn't have said that, he might get too angry now, instead he seemed to, wait was that an amused look, a smile? What? ''I hope that whatever is left of your population after this war will be a bit like you, that might keep things interesting.''

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Ok that was most certainly not what I expected from a being that had come here to gather the parts of a device that enables him to kill half of all living beings in the universe at once. On the other hand I probably should have expected something like that otherwise he would have simply bombarded us from space and taken the gems from our dead bodies.

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''I will fight you with Tony Stark and James Buchanan Barnes by my side.'' Thanos seemed to smile at that ''And I will be joined by Corvus Glave and the ever nicely mind controlled prince Loki Odinsson. By the way, shouldn't his brother be one of the people facing me now? Oh wait, now I remember, I killed him already.''

Thanos POV

Ah how nice it is to see those looks of surprise and anger on the faces of my enemies. ''It is always nice to have him by my side, even if he did eventually fail me the first time around. Though that might have been intentional on his part, since I found out yesterday that he's been trying to throw off my control over him for a while and he eventually succeeded.

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Quite talented in the mystic arts indeed to be able to throw off the continued influence of having an artefact containing the mind-stone stabbed into you for half an hour, instead of completely succumbing to it.'' I meant this, it really was a thing worthy of great praise for him to be able to throw that off of himself.

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Though it is a shame he couldn't see reason behind my plan, then again he is from a world that didn't have to worry about resources for a long period of time due to its ability to draw upon others for those things they couldn't produce themselves.

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And Corvus, oh well, if he dies then not much would be lost. While a valuable asset currently, I am close enough to my goal that an single independently skilled soldier isn't what I require most, instead it is larger armies or weapons strong enough to fight those that are able to bend the laws of the universe in a way that protects them from the might of the Infinity Stones.

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I thought about where I wanted this fight to truly happen... maybe instead of using a pocket dimension like I had just said, using an actually different dimension? So that I can trap them there if I win and maybe go back later on to fight them again? Depending on how good they truly were in comparison to me it could be somewhat fun or even just a way to train myself to fight even greater threats.

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Especially that so called 'Captain', since I can feel a nearly emerging power in him similar to the one I get from those that worship me as a God of destruction and rebirth, but a bit different, probably formed around being a shield for something or some group, or a defender of some kind.

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Now that I think about it, activating that power inside of him with the gauntlet will both strengthen him to make this fight even more interesting, but it will also heavily demoralize the enemy armies around the globe, since they would see how much power he gained, how close to a god he became, and he would still lose against my might.

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Yes, I should do that, since even without the stones working at full power I will still be way more powerful then him since I've had hundreds of millions of worshippers for centuries, while he probably isn't even a full century of age. Hmm so lets see what dimension do I want? This one? No, the locals are too likely to try to interfere with the fight.

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That one? No, if they ask for assistance from that government they might actually be able to challenge me even if I have the stones, simply because beings from another dimension won't be anywhere near as badly affected by its direct powers. Indirect powers would work against them, for sure, but I'd rather not try to fight a version of humanity with over 40 billion people and the resources and experience of a multi planetary empire that has just fought and eventually won a 30 year long war to draw upon to destroy what they would see as another attempt to wipe out their species by some powerful alien.

Also those Spartan's they have remind me somewhat of slightly different versions of the 'Captain' here, and while 1 of those would be a nice way to train my ability to fight other powerful beings in one on ones against, a dozen or possibly even more of them that I cannot affect with my gauntlet at all would be little more than a death wish. Ah no, this dimension, its perfect for my purposes.

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Humanity in it is while strong not strong enough to contest me even with only the secondary effects the full gauntlet will give me and there is pretty much nobody else that would be either willing or capable of actually mounting a cross dimensional offensive to take me out. Meanwhile they would also have to deal with the problems in that dimension if I leave them behind there. Yes, let's use this one.

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Tony POV

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Damn it, now whoever keeps Loki busy cannot go full out, but on the other hand Loki will probably be fighting it so he also will not be at his strongest. Wait a second ''Rogers, I have an idea, what if we put Barnes against him, with their mutual experience in being mind-controlled maybe he can break through to him?''

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Rogers affirmed, and Barnes replied ''I'll do what I can, from what I heard he and Thor cared a lot more about each other than most people thought and so if I focus on that and the remaining still alive Asgardian civilians, I might be able to get him to break the mind control even if only for a short amount of time.''

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I sighed, it was the best option we currently had as far as I could see ''Ok, who takes on Thanos and who fights the other guy?'' Rogers replied ''I'll fight Thanos, I'm the only one of us with both most of my equipment still intact and the actual capability to face him in direct combat for lengthy periods of time, one hit from him and your suit will be scrap metal Stark, and we need the firepower of that suit if we want to have any chance of actually winning this fight.'' Hopefully this will work.

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While we were talking, most of Thanos's army had retreated, and our forces were happy with this moment to pull the wounded behind the lines towards medical units and to reload/rearm themselves. Quick repairs to vehicles slightly behind the front lines were also happening to get them back into fighting condition while finally safe from bombardment new improvised defensive works could be set-up.

Thanos was concentrating heavily on something with the infinity gauntlet glowing, mainly the stone he gained from the tesseract, after a minute or so of him doing so a portal with blue edges appeared. Then he seemed to think for a moment before he created some kind of recording device?

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''I took the opportunity to create a camera made out of energy, this will record everything that happens and send it to view-screens all over the world. This way the entire planet will see how their champions fought bravely, but ultimately failed none the less. Also man out of time, you do know about the fact that you ultimately have the same potential to power as dear Loki here, or his late brother Thor had? The power to be what people refer to as a God?''

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Ok can he just stop calling Rogers the whole 'man out of time' thing, it seems to be turning into little more than an almost childish attempt to insult him. I had expected better of a man who considers himself the saviour that the Universe needs to keep living on. I mean really that gauntlet could give him the power to literally create infinite resources if necessary, why not just do that when the Universe has too little resources left to sustain itself for a lengthy period of time.

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Also, why is he calling Rogers a 'God'? Does he consider himself such a thing and now gives Steven, no Rogers, the same designation just because Rogers has this charisma and inner strength about him that allows him to gather people by his side even when they dislike him or want nothing to do with him? Or is he talking about 'God' in the way that Thor and Loki were considered Gods, as extremely powerful near immortal beings?

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 **And the end.** Will be continued in the next chapter, this was the first chapter of this series. Anyways, I'll also explain here what I meant when I had Thanos basically say 'Steve, you can become a god'. It always sounded odd to me that 1940's tech somehow created super-soldiers far superior to what the most advanced of modern technology can even try to do, seen to by the fact that in raw strength the Captain has everyone outside of Thanos, Hulk and some more well-known Asgardians beaten.

I then had the following idea: what if it was because of the fact that Red Skull and Captain America were both pretty much believed in as if they were some kind of Gods by some of the people on their respective sides of the war? With Red Skull, the entirety of Hydra were pretty much cultists that praised him as their God.

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With Captain America, many Americans started to see him as their defender, their shield, the 'man with a plan'. And some of them probably went to more extreme things and at the very least in their minds started seeing him as either some kind of champion from whatever God or Goddess the religion they were part of believed in, or even more extreme than that, one of the Gods of said religion themselves given flesh.

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This in turn would cause them to gain the more physical strength the higher the number of people that believed in them for longer periods of time, especially if those people that believed in them actually had a mental image of the 'God' that matched up to the actual person.

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The reason why this would work for them and not say, Hitler, who was seen by some of his followers as a God, is the fact that you need a certain level of physical capabilities to be able to actually use the faith that those people have in you and turn it into some kind of power in combat situations.

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After them, most of the so called 'super-soldier projects' were state-secrets with very few people actually truly knowing they existed at all, which caused them to not have this advantage. It is also part of the reason why some Asgardians have so much more raw physical strength than the others.

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This will become a very important part of the story later on, so if you hate it already, I apologize but the story will probably not be the best for you. Also as described by Thanos, Steve hasn't fully unlocked the abilities it would give him yet and will not unlock the full potential of most of them for some time. 

The main reason behind this is because well… who wants to see a piece of fiction were all that happens is one soldier being dropped that then bitch-slaps entire interstellar empires into submission in seconds? I don't know about you guys but I find that less interesting then a powerful person that still has boundaries trying to force their body to push past said boundaries and put their own lives on the line to save others.

Edit 11-02-2019: So for now I hope that this is better then the version I put online the first time around, but once again if any of you people have additions you think will make it a better story, please send them to me and I will look them over before trying to integrate them into it if they actually do make it better.


	2. Prologue part 2

Avengers of Mass Effect

Prologue part 2

Disclaimer: I do not own either mass effect or the marvel cinematic universe, if I did I would not be writing this story, but making changes to the games and/or sitting besides Stan Lee during his cameo's in the movies.

'' Talk'' is regular oral communication/talking out loud

 **'TALK'** Is mental communication such as telepathy or communication with things that are controlled through brain waves. Might also be used in situations dealing with possession by some kind of being/force.

Planet: Earth, Location: Wakanda, Date: Unknown.

Steve POV

Wait what did he just say? ''What are you saying Thanos?'' I said, while being a combination of surprised and angered, simply not fully understanding what he meant with that. One good thing about that sentence is that he doesn't know yet that Thor isn't dead yet. Good, might become an advantage for us later on.

''I am no God, nor have I ever had a desire to become one. I am just a man, doing whatever he can to do what is right over what is easy.'' He is probably just doing this to mess with my mind, I am no god, there is only one of them, and he's a creator, not a destroyer like me.

''And right now Thanos, you are in the way of both the survival and the happiness of not only humanity but also several other races. For that I will not only fight you till my last breath but also ensure you never have a chance to hurt them again after this.'' Let's hope he won't be able to get into contact with his forces while he is outside of this dimension.

Thanos POV

Hmm so either he doesn't know about this or he has gone into denial. Do I want to spend the time I need to convince him on this? No, while I respect their abilities in battle and want them to give me a challenge, I'm not going to wait. He might even start using it as a stalling tactic. I'll give one explanation, then we will get on with the fight.

Sigh ''I will say now, 'God' in this form does not mean you are some kind of deity immediately. most of the time it refers to a being with a certain level of physical capabilities that was worshipped/believed in by a lot of people to the point where they would gain more strength or powers from that, depending on the amount of faith those people have in you, how many beings believe in you, and how close you are to who or what the beings think you are.

Now let us get started on this fight, I have more things to do then just stand around and talk to some humans.'' I sent a small wave of power from both the space and the mind stone towards him to hasten the awakening of his true power, and then stepped into the portal with my two minions following me.

Loki POV

I hate him, I hate him! Why can that flea-bag of a wannabe conqueror not drop dead right now! First he forces me to invade the mortal realm and fight against a team that sides with my brother, in the meanwhile also forcing me to kill dozens if not hundreds of people, after which I am unable to save family members and friends I actually care about because of his meddling with my mind.

And then when I finally am able to loosen his hold on my mind, and join my brother in saving what was left of the Asgardian people after Hela invaded, he forces me to turn against those I love and care about again! And that after the people finally truly accepted me as their price, after I truly gained a warm place in their hearts.

The moment he slips up, I will make him suffer for this, and I do not care anymore if I die then, as long as what is left of the Asgardian people will be safe. If I survive I will repent for my mistakes in any way possible, but first I must ensure Thanos will not survive this.

Steve POV

I do not care about if Thanos thinks I am what he considers a 'God' I will fight him till the bitter end, I will be the shield of those he wishes to oppress, the wall between him and those I love, and if I do so, the avenger of those that fell trying to stop him! ''Let us go, and we will either win, or buy the others enough time, Thanos end is near, no matter what happens.''

The ''Once again, till the end of the line punk.'' from Buck and the ''Like you said earlier Rogers, it was an honor to serve beside you.'' from Tony were very encouraging, and I nodded to both before saluting them, causing them to return it, if a bit awkwardly in Tony's case. Then we turned around and marched towards the portal Thanos had just gone through.

3rd person POV

What Steve Rogers did not notice, was the fact that his body was glowing slightly when he thought about what he would do to defend those that would need it. The process had been started, what Thanos had said was coming true. Steve Grant Rogers was transforming into Captain America, the shield of the defenceless, avenger of the defenders, The God of the Oppressed and Avenger of the fallen. The three stepped through the portal with their heads held high, determined to end this right there, right now, at the cost of their lives if needed.

Planet: Shanxi, Location: roughly 30 kilometres north of the capital city.

Steve POV

When I walked into the portal, I expected many possible things, but the one thing I did not expect was us being in an a few hundred yards wide and roughly the same length open area in the with a big forest surrounding it. ''What is this place?'' I said without noticing I had actually talked out loud instead of keeping it as a thought until I was answered by the mad Titan.

''We are currently in a different dimension on a planet the locals call Shanxi, man out of time. Are you ready for a fight?'' I looked at the trio, with Loki visibly trying to resist the mind control, energy sparking then going out around his hands, while the other one seemed to look at us as if we were a nice meal. Thanos seemed to be enjoying the whole thing.

Tony POV

Ok, this was becoming a bit strange, Rogers was visibly glowing with energy, and seemed to not notice, then he suddenly charged at Thanos, faster than I had ever seen him do before. I quickly started bombarding the evil minion with energy blasts while flying around him, looking for a weak point in his defences, while Barnes engaged the Mind Controlled God in hand to hand combat.

And it felt very strange to even think that. I was nearly hit in the face by the enemies weapon, need to focus on the fight, but he was very overconfident throwing it at me like that in the first place, and one unibeam later he had one arm less to work with.

Ok this was going way easier than I expected. I maintained that thought until I was hit in the back by something and crashed, which was apparently the weapon he had thrown. And now flight control was damaged. Shit. Spoke way too soon. I hope the others are doing better than this.

And I also hope that that recording is focusing more on Steve's fight then that it is on mine, or else people will probably remind me of this until my dying day. Whoa! Ok, need to focus more on the fight so that I will have a future to actually think about instead of being treated as a piece of meat by a man that seems to like turning others into kebab a bit too much.

James's POV

The fight was relatively equal, which I knew was only because of the fact that he was fighting the mind control, otherwise he would have just teleported out and blasted me in the back before I even reached him, or even just used raw physical strength to overpower me.

Now though, I was using my training and ability with a combat knife and my partially vibranium arm to hold my own against his less than ideal fighting style with one daggers, while his hands were making the movements more suited to a style were you use two of them.

''Loki, I know you are in there somewhere, and I can see you are fighting it. Are you about to let another being control the God of Deception? The God of lists and tactics? You overpowered this once before, do it again for your brother, for your people, so Thanos may never hurt them again. Thor believed in you and will keep believing in you till the end of times, just like the Asgardian people do, you are their prince Loki, their hero!''

Loki POV

I knew that already, though for a near stranger with all the reason to distrust me to believe in me so much, and to also let it stop him from finishing me off, it was still touching. Also, because of a combination the captain engaging Thanos in combat and the power of the reality stones being less significant around here, his control over me was slipping, to barely above the level that the shield agents had been in when I captured them in the last attempted invasion of Earth.

I could now control my own vocal chords, even if it was only for a second ''Control head'' Thanos immediately resumed control, but it was enough for Barnes to get a hit in on me, which disarmed me of my dagger, which allowed him to hold his own even more easily.

He also seemed to get the message, if the attempted follow up hit to the back of my head being any sign, though I was forced to fight again, and with Thanos having noticed his mistake I was now closer to my actual level in ability and was forced to use my unarmed combat training and more of my raw strength.

If we get out of this alive I will owe these three and my brother everything. I hope you are still alive Thor, and if you aren't, I will avenge you. I will not rest until that beast is dead, no matter how long it will take and no matter who I need to assist me in the task.

Steve POV

I feel stronger than before somehow, I do not know why, but I will use it to take this monster down, even if it costs me my life. ''You should feel honoured child, I haven't allowed this type of challenge against me in decades, possibly as much as a century. So I hope you will be able to live up to it, otherwise I'll make those you love suffer for it, in particular that friend with the metal arm, he would be an amazing addition to my mind controlled minions.''

We had been fighting for a while, but I felt as if he was toying with me currently, only using his physical abilities, and not any of his infinity stone supernatural ones. I was losing, I am managing to slap away his hits with my vibranium semi-shields and deal some light damage to his arms in the form of scratches and small bruises, but it was costing me, he hit me with much more strength then even the hulk, the bones in at least one of my arms are going to give soon.

He hit once more, this time managing to hit me in the chest and kicking me to the ground immediately afterwards. ''You disappointed me child, I would have thought that the being considered to be near a God that was supposed to be the so called 'shield of the people' would be able to put up more of a fight.''

No this cannot be, I will not allow all those people to die, I swore to shield them from harm, defend them against this monster. Time seems to stop and I find myself in an empty plain instead of the forested area we were in before. I suddenly hear a voice that I knew very well ''So tell me Steve, are you just going to give up? Are you just going to roll over and die?

Where is the man I once loved, the man that charged a base filled with hundreds of enemies, with little more than a shield and a motor bike? That shortly after that took down one of the most feared men in the world, while crashing a plane into the north pole to save everyone?

The man that jumped down after two Gods, intending to take them down? The man that could lift Thor's hammer and use it for himself, in all essence being able to become a God, but refused to take it, wanting to spare his friend?

The man that took a stand when he saw something wrong, no matter where and fought on till the bitter end, even if against impossible odds? The man that became a worldwide symbol for honour and loyalty, and continued acting on those even though it caused him to become a fugitive to law enforcements world-wide?''

I saw Peggy, but not like how I saw her last time before here funeral, but young, like how she looked back in world war II, or how she looked in that vision of what could have been Wanda gave me once. ''I would do anything to fight him, anything to stop him from harming everyone, but I am not enough, not strong enough. I am only a man, facing a demon with the strength of a God.'' ''What will you do if I say that you can face him, that you can defeat him, that there is a way?''

''There is a way? What is it? Who are you really?'' ''It's really me Steve, and the way for you to have a chance at defeating him is by you accepting what you truly are, like Thor once did to save his people. You will face many troubles, and not truly be human anymore, but it will allow you to save all those you care about.''

''I will do anything, I do not care if I die, I do not care if I will not be human anymore, as long as the people are safe, I will do anything.'' ''Accept yourself as the shield of the people, their wall, their protector, the silent watchman that stops the evil from reaching them, and the one to avenge those that have been lost. Rise, Captain America, God of Oppressed, Avenger of the Fallen.'' ''I accept old friend'' His figure started shimmering, changing and he started to rise back up again, stronger than he ever had been and ready to face Thanos, even if it would be the end of him.

3rd person POV

In the space that Steve Rogers had just left, the woman remained, and a humanoid form made out of some kind of blue crystal appeared next to it. The woman that was once known as Peggy Carter turned towards it, extreme anger on its face ''Why did you not allow me to tell him what he would be facing here? What hardships he would face? What monsters he might be forced to fight after Thanos is dead?!''

The being made of blue crystal sighed ''Because that would have weakened his resolve to take down Thanos, because he would have known the moment he did so, he might very well never return to what once was.''

''You heartless bastard.'' ''I am the representation of a stone that has been used to perform some of the worst crimes in existence and that has lived in a sense for pretty much the entirety of history, what did you expect?'' After sighing, Peggy quietly said ''I hope you and your comrades will have a good life here Steve.''

She turns around again staring at the spot where he had stood. ''Because you not only deserve it, but will also need it to hold onto yourself in this brave new world, full of both opportunities and dangers vastly different from those you have faced in the past.''

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 **And the end. I know that this is a cliff-hanger but its either this or not updating the story for another week, I also am trying to get my chapters to not be too long so I can see what type of things people like more.**

 **If anyone can give me some pointers on the writing of close combat fighting scenes, that would be nice. I can do ranged combat and battle tactics without too many problems I think, but close combat is a bit different. Especially between beings that are hitting their enemies a dozen or so times in the span of time a normal person could hit something once or twice at most.**

 **I also hope the writing style is better for this chapter, and I thank you for the review Ninekings, if you have the time, can you please give me some feedback on the chapter? Thank you all for taking the time to read this, and I hope that you like it enough to not only continue on with reading the story but also return in case of updates.**

 **Rewrite 12-3-2019: At this date I am done rewriting this chapter for now, I would like it if anybody can give comments on what is good and what is bad about this updated version of the chapter. I once again thank you all for reading this, hope it was a good read.**


	3. Shanxi arc chapter 1

Avengers of Mass Effect

Shanxi arc chapter 1

Quick note: I apologize for this beforehand, but after doing some studying up on systems alliance military doctrine, I realized that as soon as a colonies outwards communications network is disabled and the enemy doesn't hold themselves to something similar to a Geneva conventions style agreement in regards to the treatment of civilians in wartime, both the colony, the colonial garrison and the its remaining population are done for.

This is because the alliance mainly uses garrisons to slow down the enemy and gain information on them, not to actually fight head on against a well-armed force and have a chance at winning. Because of this I'm changing the strategy a bit by giving all colonies a 100 to 200% larger garrison, depending on how big the garrison was to begin with.

Also the strategy in space used by the Systems Alliance… yeah they only work if you either A: don't care about the opponent occupying your territories and potentially killing off the population of your colonies, or B you own a large amount of sparsely populated territory in the direction the opponent will be coming from and thus have a full day or longer to react after the early warning systems go off before the opponent reaches a target of any importance.

The reason for this is simple: Mass Relays are extreme chokepoints in ME space warfare, since the region from where attackers will come from can be easily determined. The problem with the Systems Alliance strategy in regards to this is that while this initially gives the colonies defenders an advantage, it also means that if the Systems Alliance fleet arrives after the colonial defence force has already been taken down. (Which considering in canon that is usually only 2 or 3 ships at most colonies not all that surprising.)

Disclaimer: I do not own either mass effect or the marvel cinematic universe, if I did I would not be writing this story, but making changes to the games or sitting beside Stan Lee during his moments in the movies.

'' Talk'' is regular oral communication/talking out loud

 **'TALK'** Is mental communication such as telepathy or communication with things that are controlled through brain waves. Might also be used in situations dealing with possession by some kind of being/force.

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Planet: Shanxi, Location: roughly 30 kilometres north of the capital city

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Tony POV

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This would have been one hell of a lot easier if I hadn't been cocky and lost flight control early on in this fight, what the fuck? Since when is that guy strong enough to rip trees out of the ground and throw them with even more ease then Rogers throws his shield?!

Luckily his aim is off when throwing anything other than his main weapon, since he can't control them with his mind. Hmm he's lined up so that if I hit that tree he damaged while deflecting one of my blasts now it should fall on him, let's hope that that works.

Lining up my shot at the tree while behind my own sparse cover I manage to hit it and the energy blast took it down, sending it falling towards Corvus Glave, who somehow managed to dodged it.

However this does give me an opportunity. Stepping out from behind my own cover, aiming the Uni-beam at him before firing, and there now there is a giant hole in his torso. Now a last blast to the face should finish him off, there done. Turning around I see Thanos preparing to strike the death blow to Rogers, the energy around whom seemed to glow brighter right now.

Just what is it with that energy? Never mind, I need to go in and save him, in this situation he's our only hope of holding against Thanos for any length of time, considering my suit is fucked and Barnes is still busy with Loki. If we make it out of this alive though, Rogers owes me big time.

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Thanos POV

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And there he is down on the ground, the so called undefeatable hero of that primitive planet. Though to be honest their defences and the weapons wielded by their defenders were overall anything but primitive, but I digress. Now all I need to do to finish off this man and also the hopes of these people is gather some energy in my hand and send it crashing down into his chest.

Hmm it was a nice bit of a fight, and a bit more difficult than I made it look on the outside while also controlling Loki, but with the gauntlet working fully or with me not having to control Loki, I would have slaughtered him... wait a second. Why am I suddenly flying through the air? And then crashing into something very painfully?!

What, crashing into that tree hurt somehow... how can that be? I'm the mad titan, a God, crashing into something as weak as an overgrown piece of shrubbery should not have been able to hurt me. ''Thanos you will not live to terrorize those I care about, you will die here, on this planet, in this dimension even if it is the last thing I do!''

And then my vision was suddenly filled with a shield with a star in its centre slamming into my face, while stinging beams of energy slammed into me from multiple sides. Damn these fools, why can they not realize the righteousness of my cause!

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Steve POV (moments earlier)

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When I came to Thanos was still gathering energy in his hand, and seemed distracted by his thoughts on something, good. Then he will not see this coming. My body was changing slightly, though not too much of it outwardly, but my muscles now felt stronger, as if I was put through another project like the one that made me into a super-soldier originally.

The damaged vibranium semi-shield on my left hand was also replaced by a replica of the shield I knew all too well and had fought with for years, though this time around I could actually feel it, and use it as a conductor for energy and fire attacks, like Thor did with lightning when he still had his hammer

Gathering all the energy I thought the shield could withstand, I slammed it into Thanos face with my left hand alone, and he went flying backwards with at least one of his bones broken, and hit a very big, sturdy looking tree. Only after he hit it I saw that it was not a tree, but a painted very big rock... I will find out why that was later, though I have a good idea, but for now I'll just take him down.

''Thanos you will not live to terrorize those I care about, you will die here, on this planet, in this dimension even if it is the last thing I do!'' I jumped forward, shield in front of me held with my left hand once again, diverting raw energy to my legs to get more power behind the hit, and after hitting his face, I kicked him in the chest while using his body to perform a flip out of range while stark sent some energy blasts into his face.

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Bucky POV (at the same time Steve was coming to)

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I grabbed Loki by the should and forcefully turned him so he could see Steve and Thanos, also immediately unbalancing him, while using my metal arm to keep him in place. ''Look Loki, watch this, we need you to fight it, otherwise he will die, and he is the only one of us to even stand the slightest chance in a physical one on one fight against Thanos, we need you to come back to us, for Thor for your people.''

While saying this he hit Loki in the back of the head, which caused him to fall down for a moment, but he got back up within seconds, by this point in time his eyes had gone back to their natural colour instead of the zombie bright blue.

Suddenly Steve started shimmering, the small shield on his left arm changed back into his old shield, which then started glowing and flew towards Thanos face so fast I could barely follow it, the hit sent the mad destroyer flying back towards the forest, with the big tree he would hit changing into stone within the blink of an eye.

''Thank you. the assistance of you and the others is very nice, now how can I help take down this monster?'' ''I don't think we were ever formally introduced, James Buchannan Barnes'' ''Loki Odinsson''

''Can you magically create a close quarters or ranged weapon that can actually pierce his Thanos skin, it would be nice to actually be able to damage him and Steve might be in need of assistance. Though he does seem to do alright currently, but I don't know how long it will last since this has never happened before.''

''I can create a dagger that will penetrate his skin, it won't go very deep though because of him soaking both in his power as a 'God' with dozens if not hundreds of millions of followers and more recently the power of some of the infinity stones. I myself will be ranged support, the combination of our fight and fighting off the Titans influence has left me exhausted.''

He said this while creating and giving me a 10 inch dagger. I nodded in thanks before replying before replying. ''Thank you and noted.'' After which I charged forward to assist my old friend. Because who better to help the worlds stalwart defender then his brother in all but blood?

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Tony POV

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Ok, I can now fly short distances with those quick repairs I did, but with the damage the suit has received, I'm still more of an artillery piece or long ranged support rather than having the actual ability to fight Thanos while going close to him. Hmm this tree branch should be nearly strong enough to hold the Hulk standing on it, little old me in this armour will be no problem.

Let's see, currently Rogers is in the way, wait since when does he have his old shield back? Doesn't really matter currently I'll ask him after Thanos is dead. A near whispered ''Fire'' can be heard over my comms, coming from Barnes, who was now charging forward with a big knife in his hands, and I happily complied with it.

Hitting Thanos in the face directly in his left eye, while Loki teleported a dozen yards or so to his left and hit his arm with some kind of ice blast it seemed? No matter, probably related to him having Ice Giants in the family tree.

Rogers meanwhile uses a blind punch that Thanos threw with his gauntlet clad left hand by dodging it, then grabbing it and slamming his shield harshly against the arm, probably breaking some of the bones in it. Meanwhile Barnes manages to get close enough to slash Thanos already wounded left arm multiple times with his knife, while trying to take rip the gauntlet off his arm.

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Thanos POV

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No, this cannot be, but if I die here then they will die with me! I use whatever strength I have left to close the portal to back home, causing the magical recorder to disappear and the stones in the gauntlet to become even weaker, and I try to concentrate enough to use it as a bomb.

Damnit Loki freezes my neck before I can finish it, after which Rogers starts gathering energy in his free hand ''This is for everyone that has suffered because of you Thanos'' After this there is only darkness, I feel nothing nor see anything anymore except for 1 blue crystallite being that laughs at me and says ''You had this coming for a long time 'master' ''

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Loki POV

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Finally the monster is dead but, why do I feel so weak all of a sudden? I look over to Rogers and he seems to be having the same problem. I hear Stark curse ''Shit, this is fucking unbelievable. The son of a bitch managed to close the portal just before he died, Loki, do you know how to recreate it?'' What. We cannot go back? I cannot go back to my brother? My people? Now that they have finally accepted me? Now that I have finally truly redeemed myself?

I need to focus, focus on getting back, we have the infinity stone of space here, I should be able to fix the portal in less than a day. ''Let me see how much power there is left in the stones, we should be able to use them to recreate a return portal.'' I sent a power reading spell which took some out of me, which is strange, normally this should not take that much energy, probably because of the exhaustion.

What no, no this can't be, this cannot be right! This is a partially completed infinity gauntlet with multiple stones in it, it should not have less than half the power that the Tesseract had on its own when I used it years ago!

Wait a moment... Thanos said we were in another dimension. That means that the reality stones are most likely much weaker here because they cannot draw upon the universes power. Same with me and Captain Rogers, we are both away from our main power source, the ones that believe in us/have faith in us.

Apparently my realization showed on my face because Captain Rogers spoke up ''Loki, is there something wrong with the portal? Also can you explain why I feel so much weaker than mere moments ago, and why the stones lost most of their glow and feeling of power?'' I sighed, well they would find out when I couldn't get the portal going anyways.

''There is a big problem currently that affects both us and the stones. The reason why you lost most of your power, why I lost some of my power and why the stones feel so much weaker, is because we are in another dimension.''

Barnes seemed a bit surprised ''What do you mean the reason why they lost power is because we are in another dimension?'' Both Stark and Rogers seemed to realize why ''It is because most of the power both Rogers and the Stones were getting was a form of continues supply from our dimension, with the portal closed, there is no connection that either of them can get power from.

Most of Loki's power on the other hand stems from people that religiously believed in him in the past, because of which he still has a big part of his power. However due to the recent re-emergence of belief in the Asgardian Pantheon he's still cut off from a regular power supply from back home.'' reasoned Stark.

''Partially yes Stark, but also because this dimension apparently never had a being that truly resembled the idea of a 'Loki', or any other member of the Asgardian pantheon really. This causes me to get some power from the small amount of people that still believe in either the idea of me or the pantheon in general, which is currently strengthening me.

Do not ask me how I know this, I do not know how I got the information myself, which is very irritating.'' I scanned the stones a second time, and now they were slightly stronger. The difference was extremely small, a difference roughly the size of 1 in a million, but it was more powerful now then it was with my last scan.

I repeat the process, which caused the others to be intrigued about what was happening ''I had to double check, but apparently there is a good news. At the very least the space stone is regenerating some power, it is extremely slow, but it is happening.'' All three of them seemed understandably relieved.

''Ok, how fast are we talking about until it gets to the necessary amount of power? A few days? A few weeks? A few months?'' seeing that I hadn't answered yet Rogers became a bit more anxious ''a few years?''.

I did some rough calculations and then replied ''At this rate, unless we decide to use any of the stones or the gauntlet itself, it will take slightly more than 10 years. If we use either the gauntlet any of the stones outside of the space stone, it will take slightly more than 12 years.

While they look dissatisfied with this, I sadly enough have to be the bringer of even more bad news. ''However, if we use the space stone for any reason, it could be set back to 40 possibly even 50 years before we can create a portal that not only reaches our dimension but is also stable enough for us to not instantly die upon arrival and well directed enough that we arrive in our own dimension, and not just some random other dimension.''

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3rd person POV, Shanxi military headquarters moments after the portal appeared

A young officer that oversaw the satellite footage, both outwards into space and the inward satellites aimed at the planet itself, was running through the base towards the war room of the base. She burst through, while inside there was a meeting going on between General Williams, Colonel Miller of the Shanxi militia and Captain Smith, the commanding officer of the small Systems Alliance flotilla defending Shanxi.

This flotilla had recently been re-enforced with the regional Systems Alliance quick reaction flotilla after the start of the hostilities with aliens in the area and went from 3 ships, consisting 2 frigates and 1 cruiser, to a 15 ship big defence flotillia of 2 cruisers, 8 frigates and 5 corvettes.

This was however not enough to calm the personnel operating from the planet since they had lost contact with a flotilla of 20 Chinese exploration and warships hours ago and hadn't heard of them yet, meaning that chances were high of the flotilla having died in battle against another group of said earlier mentioned hostile alien force after they killed the first group of enemies.

Another problem with this situation being that most of the flotilla that had gone through the relay had been part of the Chinese element of the defensive flotilla near Shanxi, including its commanding officer. This meant that they couldn't just think of the enemy victory as a fluke caused by an incompetent commander or bad crews on the Chinese part, since they all knew the man was a capable and experienced officer, with the crew of at the very least his flagship also having been some of the best the Chinese could field.

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General Williams POV

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I was surprised by 2nd lieutenant Anderson bursting into the room like that, she was supposed to have been at her post currently and knew better then to intrude without reason. I hope something didn't go wrong badly.

''General, Colonel, Captain, I apologize to all three of you for bursting into this meeting like that, but we currently have a situation going on groundside, some kind of blue portal opened up on the surface of the planet, and 6 individuals have stepped out, with at least 2 of them being clearly non-human, 1 human, and of the last three we are unsure if they are human or not.''

What. ''They also seem to be in 2 groups of 3 that are on opposing sides of a conflict, I'll patch the current live data through now'' She patched the data through to the big screen on the side of the war room, with everyone in the room watching the feed intently in silence.

(A portion of the battle is being shown, starting from the beginning of this chapter)

''Did anybody else notice that the black haired male that seemed to get a change of heart during the battle was wearing old Norse style clothing while the seeming leader of the group that won is wearing what seems to be a heavily customised mid 21st century combat suit.'' Could be heard from one of the soldiers in the room, sergeant Aragorn I believe.

''No, I was more focused on the fact that at the very least some of these people are genetically enhanced to much greater level than even those new Siberian Biotic Legions and Heavy Assault Legions the Russians and Australians are fielding respectively, seen by the fact that they were throwing relatively big trees around as if it were sticks, shooting energy blasts out of what seemed to be their bare hands, creating knives out of thin air and somehow to top it all off transforming their weapons between entirely different forms.

And after this at least one of them is still more then fine enough to move at a speed similar to those earlier mention Russian and Australian non-human super-soldier legions. How the fuck did your mind go to their sense of style before processing all this information sergeant.

And this all within a day after we've made hostile contact with some kind of alien life-forms that decided they just didn't like us and didn't even bother explaining the reasoning as to why they have such a problem with us.''

That reaction was at least partially sarcastic, which is completely unlike myself, but I couldn't help it. We were watching multiple humans and aliens duke it out less than 100 kilometres away from the capital city on this planet, and he had noticed the clothing styles rather than the fact that those same beings could potentially throw buildings around with their bare hands without having to put much effort into that action.

This was going to be a disaster if it ended up becoming a fight. Sigh, as if my hope of this being a nicely peaceful if somewhat boring assignment wasn't already stomped on enough by hostile alien contact just one relay away. Just what have I done to deserve this kind of assignment?

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 **And that's it for now, thank you all for reading this, please leave constructive commentary behind about what I write if you do leave commentary behind, I will not read things that are only shouting about how bad this story is without actually giving the reason(s) why my writing is so bad to deserve said statements. Thank you all.**

 **Next chapter will have more of the Shanxi garrisons reaction to this, and also show interaction between the two groups. Will also show Tony's reaction to the idea of mass effect technology. See you all next chapter.**

 **Authors note 26-3-2019: And I'm finally done rewriting this chapter. If any beta-reader reads this and is interested in assisting me with this, please message me, it is taking me way too long to do this for my liking because of how hard it is to pick up on your own mistakes in written works.**


	4. Shanxi arc chapter 2

Avengers of Mass Effect

Shanxi arc chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own either Mass Effect or the marvel cinematic universe, if I did this would instead be the script of either a large scale DLC for all the games and I would be sitting next to Stan Lee during his cameo's.

Edit 6-4-2019: I started editing this chapter today, rest in peace to Stan Lee who died not long ago.

''Talk'' This signifies regular oral communication between people, including oral communication happening through things like a radio.

Talk Text underlined like this indicates mental communication in the form of telepathy between two willing parties.

 _''Talk''_ Text written in cursive like this indicates that the person that you are viewing hears something not in their natural language that they also do not have a translator for in their omnitool or similar devices, if they understand it or not can be seen by in what language it is written.  
If written in English cursive it means that the person does still understand it, if it is written in the actual language in cursive then the person who's POV you're reading from doesn't understand it. Exception to this of course is if the language the other group doesn't understand is English, however chances of that happening will be rare enough that you can almost instantaneously notice it when this is happening.

 **'Talk'** Text written in bold like this signifies forced mental communication and mental possessions.

 **''Talk''** A being with a very high level of supernatural power is talking while letting it out, for instance Loki doing spells with the infinity stones powering him, Captain Rogers declaring his oath from becoming a God and drawing power upon it to defend those who cannot defend themselves, etc.

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Planet: Shanxi, Location: Military headquarters inside the capital, Time: moments after we left off in the last chapter, POV: 3rd person

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Everyone in the room was silent for a moment before General Williams decided upon a course of action and started giving out orders. ''I want an evacuation of the civilian population to start right now, get them into the shielded bunker complex, first priority given to civilians in the direction the enemy is coming from, all APC's and half of the IFV's we have are to be put to use to accomplish this.

Warn all other cities and their garrisons to follow plan Seven B and head towards the bunkers hidden in the forests around them, in case this is followed up by an enemy attack the capital will hopefully draw their attention away from those areas long enough for re-enforcements to arrive. The remaining two battalions of Chinese Regulars, the Chinese military reservists in those areas and the towns local militias will have to guard them in those bunkers.

Next up I want all aircraft that we have to ready themselves for battle, even if the group that won that fight near the portal is peaceful it is almost certain the enemy on the other side of the relay won their fight against the Chinese exploration flotilla and as such they might very well attack while we're still evacuating the civilians.

While this is happening I want our infantry to start digging defensive trenches and other defences around the City to connect the already there static defences to each-other, with 75% of the infantry regulars and half of the militia regulars spread out evenly over the Eastern, Southern and Western sides. Meanwhile the Northern side will not only have the remaining 25% of the infantry regulars but they will be supported by all mechanised and armoured units we have available that aren't involved in the evacuation effort.

The remaining half of the militia will be split into taking defensive positions in important strategic locations inside the city such as the bunker complex, communications towers and the vehicle yard, and forming a mobile reserve force to fill the gap anywhere in the front line where our troops are having severe difficulties. Lastly we'll get law enforcement to fill up the position of last lines of defence for the civilians inside the bunkers. Are these orders understood?''

All soldiers in the room saluted before a chorus of ''Sir, yes sir!'' could be heard from them. ''See to it that these orders are followed, dismissed.'' At this he once again got a number of salutes while the junior officers went to brief their units on the situation and get them into their assigned positions.

He then turned towards the nearest communications officer ''Contact the airfield, see what aircraft we can get up and how fast.'' After this he turned towards another nearby ''Get in contact with the law enforcement headquarters, and get them to arm up their officers as a last line of defence.''

Then he turned towards the young officer that had run into the room to show him and the other officers what was happening. ''You go call up Lieutenant Thomas Armstrong that he needs to report for duty at the vehicle depot immediately together with two squads of his platoon to go out and meet with these new people.

Also get into contact with whatever linguists and cultural experts you can find and have them assemble in meeting room five.'' After saying this he turned towards a camera in the corner of the room and said ''Sergei contact the planetary governor, he'll probably need to be there too. As soon as you've briefed him on the situation, start checking in on all stationary posts and troop patrols around the planet to see if they have seen or found anything suspicious.''

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General Williams POV

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Damnit, just why the hell did seven of the nine battalions of Chinese Regulars that were supposed to be stationed on the planet have to be away from it at this point in time, four of them going with the flotilla and another three of them being transferred to another newer colony, their replacements would according to schedule arrive next week however by that point in time we would probably either be under siege or possibly even already defeated.

Now I'm going to have to hold against an unknown number of enemies that might very well have millions of ground troops to throw at me while I've got less then eight thousand troops in total, with both the militia and law enforcement being included in that number. Oh why did these bastards have to show up at one of humanities newest colonised systems and not for example the Hydra system?

There they would have found a defence force that united has the numbers to fill six fleets and is made up out of forces of four different nation states waiting on them, and I don't think they would have fared anywhere near as well against 400 dedicated capital class warships and some 200 police sloops as they did against 20 ships with half of them being scouting and exploration vessels. And even if they did break through that fleet they would still be fighting close to two-hundred thousand professional soldiers alone with nearly thrice that number in law enforcement and militia members added in on two different planets.

Sigh I cannot change the situation simply by hoping it would change. I'll have to get back to work. ''There are fifteen fighters that can be ready to be in the air in around five minutes, however if they have slightly more than ten minutes we'll also have ten Chinese army attack helicopters, three police helicopters, five gunships and four armed shuttles ready.''

Hmm a decent amount, though nowhere near enough should the enemy come by with a full invasion force its more then enough to make any initial attack wave bleed badly. ''Also the flight lieutenant left in command of the in atmosphere air-forces after his immediate superior fell ill is asking if he can look into starting to bring some aircraft from the Indian War era and newer back online that are currently in the museum of military history located near the airfield?''

While those things won't be the best aircraft due to lacking shields and such, they might be of use after all, not only that but this also gives me an idea. ''Tell him he has twelve minutes to prepare our current aircraft. Inform the logistics staff of the air-force that they are from now on allowed to procure any aircraft that might actually still work in a fight and that the Systems Alliance will foot the bill if it comes down to it.

Also have a few of mechanics we have in service look around the museum to see if any of the old tanks and IFV's are still in a useful condition, some of those tanks will be more then armoured and powerful enough to serve as mobile unshielded bunkers and anti-tank guns, while the IFV's should work in a pinch as well armed if slow APC's since it's armour should easily be able to compare to the combination of a barrier and armour of the modern APC's.''

Oh this is situation is turning better with the minute, while nowhere near good yet and we are still in severe trouble with us having less then two thirds of our usual numbers, with the added armour we should be able to hold out against any force less than five times our size for at least a week even if they have severe orbital superiority as long as the shield will hold.

At this I turn to captain Smith who has been following the happenings with great attention. ''Captain, do you have any time-table on when re-enforcements will arrive? The third fleet should be here in slightly more than a week right? With hundreds of ships?'' At this the captain shakes his head sadly.

''While we should be getting some naval re-enforcements in five days, it won't be the Systems Alliance third fleet. They are currently being held back for repairs since most of their carriers have been damaged, at this point I'm unsure if it was in a training exercise or a deliberate attack from anyone, and after the repairs are done they still need to first head to the assembly point where the patrol flotilla's scheduled to join them will arrive.

This together with the low FTL speed of their troop freighters means they'll only arrive in 12 days. I'm unsure of their total number, though it will be nearly three-hundred ships, 200 of those the third fleets original ships, roughly 100 from patrol flotilla's joining it'' Wait if not the third fleet than what group is going to arrive to support us before that? ''The fleet coming to assist us in five days is the UTC fifth fleet, that was doing an exercise near the Dutch-Belgian colony some eight lightyears away from here.

It is composed of Dutch, Belgian and British ships, 72 in total supported by one Systems Alliance light dreadnought. The other ships in the fleet are one light dreadnought, three carriers, ten heavy cruisers, eighteen light cruisers and forty frigates. The number of frigates would be lower with more heavier ships however they had to leave a large number of those behind since they needed to leave a decent amount of firepower behind to defend the colony there and with most of the other heavy ships being pre-element zero ships they would have slowed the fleet down.''

While it's a shame that they couldn't bring more of those with them, I do understand it. We know very little about the enemies strength in the area and if we lose here that colony is almost certainly going to be the next target. Also the simple fact that its UTC ships makes up a lot for those numbers, while nowhere near as cost efficient to create as full Element Zero ships are, they have more then enough armour and firepower to defeat enemy fleets of significantly larger numbers.

Especially with how the aliens according to the report of the first skirmish beyond the relay don't seem to understand the idea of armouring ships at all and with energy shots going past Eezo based shields, though they do lose a significant amount of power when talking about military ones, you still need a decent amount of armour to stop a half powered directed energy blast when before losing half that power it ranged in the twenty to sixty kilotons depending on what ship fired it.

''Any possible chances of the UTC fifth fleet getting delayed for whatever reason?'' Suddenly the figure of the bunker's organic AI in charge of communications, lieutenant Sergei, appeared on the holo-screen where moments earlier the video of the fight played. ''Sir I apologize for disturbing your conversation but we might have a severe problem, during a check-in with all guard posts to ensure none had come under attack of any kind, one failed to report in.''

As he said this a frown could be seen on his holographic face while his systems alliance uniform was frizzled, a sign of great worry. ''What post didn't report in? And who is in command there currently?'' Sergei looked even more worried, which is very strange, how was there something more problematic then that the post didn't report in in the first place?

''The post not reporting in is the one guarding the shield generator sir and the current commanding officer over there is your younger brother.'' This caused Colonel Miller to turn towards me visibly surprised ''Pardon my language sir, but since when the living hell could your brother be trusted with tasks of high importance regarding the safety of this colony, especially now that this will soon become a warzone?''

''I don't know, the drunken piece of shit will probably had that A.I. friend of his illegally put his name in the system to make it look like he was supposed to be stationed there while switching the name of the actual officer supposed to be there to do his patrols, just so that he didn't actually have to do much of anything.

Colonel Miller, please send your second in command over with a hundred of the reserve militia troops, she'll take over command of the post until we find the officer that was actually supposed to be there, also have her send my brother here so I can remind him that I'm the general in command of the troops on this planet, and he's simply a lieutenant and as such is supposed to follow my orders.''

Why oh why was my brother stationed here again, the worthless bastard always has had a problem with actually doing any work and used all potential ways he could to get out of active duties like patrolling and never took more passive duties such as specific locations seriously. He is probably either asleep or once again playing online video games right now while as the locations commanding officer he should be monitoring the shield generator right now.

Sigh enough about him, that should be dealt with for now. ''Okay so back to our previous topic, is there any way that the UFC fifth fleet could be delayed because of outside of some large scale technical problems with their ships?'' At this captain Smith's face takes on a grim look.

''There are several actually, the Chinese and American governments have asked the EU to move to the relay connecting us with the nearest system and wait on the third fleet instead of going here straight from their own colony with regular FTL engines. And when I say asked I mean they are putting heavy political and economical pressure on the group to have them follow along with their plans.''

What the hell? ''Why would they do that? I know that they aren't exactly friendly to each-other but we're talking about a war against aliens here, potentially a very long term conflict dragging on for years or even decades. Just why the hell would they fuck up international relations in the opening week of the conflict already?''

Smith seemed to sigh at this. ''You really aren't the best with political situations you know that? There are multiple reasons why they could be doing this however there are three main reasons, the first is that the Chinese President is new to the job, as in he's only been integrated for less than two months after the previous one died due to a heart attack.

If the UFC is the one to fight and win the first battle against these aliens on one of China's own colonies especially this early into his term, the public will probably be ready to overthrow not only him personally but likely his entire party considering the whole Chinese Mandate of Heaven approach to rulership.

This would destabilize his country in wartime and also have a good chance of destroying the ideology he has pledged his life to, so both politically and militarily seen it is actually a decent judgement. The problem however with it is that since he isn't a military man he possibly does not realize that there is a good chance that if we stop the aliens as soon as possible and take them out we could easily be able to force the aliens into a cease-fire that is in our favour, giving us more time to prepare for an actual continuation of a war, instead of his idea where the war will be an immediate long term thing no matter if we win or lose here.

He is also disregarding the higher amount of deaths the colony will most likely suffer in case the colony comes under siege anywhere in the next week due to this line of thought, since he believes that they would only lose way more if he does not take this action because of political instability back home. Meanwhile the American president is more of a glory-dog and a war-hawk, he believes that America is the greatest nation in Terran space and as such should be the one to fight and defeat Terra's enemies.

He probably finds the very idea of a much smaller and in his eyes insignificant nation-state like the Dutch Union or Belgium winning the first battle against aliens for humanity very unappealing. One of the things they are threatening with are trade sanctions, mainly on element zero derived technologies and on element zero itself.''

That… is going to be a pain, especially if the war is going to be a prolonged one. The aliens are already more advanced on the subject of element zero then that we are, these types of actions would only cause more problems to our capabilities in such a conflict. ''Since you apparently know a significantly larger amount about the economic situation then I do, how high are the chances that those threats will actually work?

I mean I know that they would never back down in case the Americans or Chinese were threatening with a war against them in an effort to gain something out of it, however right now they might just because of a fear of being weakened due to a foreign threat. So the rough chances?''

At this Smith smiled ''Close to zero sir, they know that the threats are likely bluffs since the Dutch and British are the ones that control the terraforming sector, while the Dutch, Australians and French are the ones that control most of the food exports sector, which with this war means that they are going to be some of the most influential trading partners around as nobody wants to get into a situation where their armies starve to death in the middle of nowhere.

Nor does anyone want to anger the people that can actually repair their lands the quickest and most efficiently after the war is over if those get damaged intensively by these aliens over the course of said war. So while the Europeans need the American and Chinese element zero technology, the Chinese especially need Dutch, Australian and French food and agriculture related supplies even more than the Europeans and Australians need said technology.

Especially considering that they can just use older but still functioning Terran technologies for most of the same functions the element zero technology is used for, while the Chinese can't cough up food from anywhere to feed anywhere near even half of their three billion sized population during wartime, even if the Americans and Australians start supplying them whatever they can spare it would still probably end up with some three-hundred million people starving and a decent portion of the remainder living on bare necessities food wise.''

On the one hand its bad that such a thing would be necessary, on the other hand that is very good for the chances the people of this planet have at surviving. Smith continues ''Also apparently the Vatican wants in on the fun, they started up the process of gathering a civilian relief fleet with medical supplies, food, drink and both the tools and materials to rebuild after damage. They got a large number of volunteers from private ship owners after declaring it the religious duty of any catholic to assist their fellow Terrans in their time of need.

In case we stand to lose the colony they'll instead be used to evacuate all civilians and wounded military personnel back to safer space, with them being defended by the combination of an Italian UFC Flotilla and pretty much all Papal ships that can actually use FTL of high enough quality to keep up with the Chinese fleet, with the Italians also escorting them back again while the Vatican's ships will stay here to assist in the defence of the colony. The total numbers of the military aspects of this fleet will probably be some sixty capital class warships.''

''That is a positive thing for us, now could you please move two of your corvettes into atmosphere to give cover to the capital in case somebody else decides to jump in through some kind of portal? If the group Chinese fought on the other side of the relay also have this kind of technology, they'll be more useful as powerful orbital support rather then small fry in space while there aren't any enemies to fight.''

At this he nodded before saluting. ''It will be done general, captain Smith out.'' As the life-sized and life like hologram left I looked towards the holo-table in front of me. ''Segrei, inform me how well the evacuation is going right now, and how far is the arming up of off duty militia and reservists going along.''

Sergei nods. ''The evacuation is going well sir, the Chinese have signalled that they have gotten the message out well and far more than half of the population they need to evacuate is already being moved towards the various smaller bunkers. Meanwhile percentage of those already evacuating themselves to the main bunker is 70%, with some 5% of those actually already having reached the bunker and are now starting to file into it.

The militia and most of the reservist forces have been called to duty already due to the process having been started earlier after the Chinese ended up in that battle on the other side of the relay. The reservists in the area around the capital have been ordered to follow orders of you as the planetary commander since the Chinese general that is actually in command over their units left with his troops on the flotilla that crossed the relay. The remaining Chinese high ranking officers will be cut off from the capital as per protocol to make it less likely for the invaders to find them, so those also weren't an option.''

Okay that is a good thing, that will cause less problems when we need to react quickly with only one chain of command. ''Put half of their units with the militia in the reserve for now and have them support the bunker guards, the remaining half is to defend evacuation routes in case they come under attack from enemy saboteurs and form quick reaction units near the front-lines of the defence.''

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Planet: Shanxi, Location: Forest clearing some 40 kilometres North of the planetary capital. Time: at the same moment where Williams starts shouting giving out orders. POV: Steve Rogers

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''Ok, so to be clear no matter what happens or how much we work on it the earliest we can get back to our home dimension is years?'' Loki nodded, an understandably anguished look on his face, with my own probably having that same look. Tony was worse then either of us could ever be though, probably because he had the shortest biological life-span out of all of us and with Pepper having a roughly equal life-span, they will be separated for a large portion of their lives.

And that is if nothing goes wrong, if even a single situation requires us to use part of the power trapped inside those stones we might very well be trapped here for the entire remainder of his life. I was also missing Sharon and our friends badly, and hated that I could not assist more in the defence of the Earth, but I had already dealt with a similar situation once before, and will be able to do so once again if needs be.

We need to find a place to stay on this planet fast, not only that but also learn if it is inhabited by other sapient/sentient life forms, whichever word you use for it. ''Loki, is it possible for you to scan the area for sentient life-forms with your own magic?'' He nods, good that is one positive thing.

''Stark you should start repairing your suit, Bucky stand guard over the two of them while they are busy, I'll go scout the area physically to see if there are any structures that could serve as a temporary home nearby. Also, Loki, store that gauntlet in some dimension pocket of your own making if possible, it would be a pain if it got damaged while we were carrying it with us or during a battle of some kind.''

They all nodded now, clearly at the very least relieved to have something to do and take their minds off just how painful it will be not to see our loved ones for years. ''Ok, in roughly fifteen minutes I'll return here and we'll all put together what information we've gained on this place after having had a bit of time to gain a first impression of the situation.

Loki, if you do find sentient living beings, please focus somewhat on their species looks like if you can, it would be a pain to get into a fight with what we think is a local wild predator while in reality it's one of the planets native sentient beings.'' He nods at this, probably already having thought of it but it is a good idea to make certain in situations like this, that scenario would really be a pain to deal with.

After this I turned towards Tony, ''Stark I know you usually like to work alone more and also understand your reasons why, however it would be better for us if you make up a list of what types of materials you'll need to repair the suit completely so one of us can go to the local markets if his search turns out to be fruitful, probably Loki if I'm being honest because of his shapeshifting abilities, where we can buy it for you.''

Tony nodded at this, good. ''I understand Rogers, you might be a God now but I'm still the Genius here, not you.'' I laughed a bit, even if it was a bad attempt at a joke, it's still better for him to attempt to cope that way rather then clamming up or going into shock, which I had honestly feared would happen to at least one of us given the situation.

I discreetly nodded to Bucky, who nodded back and informed me through sign language 'Will watch them. Stay safe.' My reply was in return in the same language, since he probably feels slightly more comfortable talking that way currently 'Will do old friend. Stay safe yourself.' Before running to the edge of the clearing and starting to climb a tree, using one of the branches as a final push off point and parkouring my way on top of the highest branches in the forest that can still carry me towards the distant edge of it to the South.

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Planet: Shanxi, Location: edge of the forest near a farm 21 kilometres from the capital, 10 minutes afterwards, still Steve POV

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I just hope they aren't trying to kill each other, wait a second how did I not notice that farm earlier, its about a kilometre away from the forests edge, good. Dropping to the ground for a moment to look upon it somewhat more closely I finally notice something. I'm at least half a foot, or in other words some 16 centimetres taller then I was previously. What the hell happened?

I can think on that later, first things first, analysing this place. Ok so the edge of the forest is roughly one kilometre away from the farmstead, which was connected to a more modern newer road by a dirt track leading to it that was nearly a full kilometre long, with fields of what seems to be some kind of wheat extending along most of that track. Wait since when do I think in metric terms for distances and how can I tell the near exact length of such things just by looking at them?

Might have something to do with this whole 'God' thing, will have to ask Loki about it later. Anyways the building style actually looks similar to the design to that Chinese farm I have seen in a picture, might we be on an alternate version of Earth? No, probably not, with how advanced that road seems there would have been a much larger amount of buildings and other forms of settlement in the nearby area then having to walk eight kilometres to even be able to see something made by humans in an area as fertile as this place seems to be.

This means that either we're dealing with some kind of alien species that has an architectural style similar to the Chinese, option two we're dealing with a humanity that has a completely different home-planet then Earth one with larger amounts of fertile land causing humanity to not use up a lot of it even though they've reached a certain scientific level already. Option three we're dealing with some kind of space-faring humanity and this is one of their colonies.

For some reason I don't know which option would be something more problematic to deal with. Sigh I'll just have to get back to the clearing. Turning around I run back towards the forest, jumping up, grabbing a branch, launching myself up with it again and repeating this process another two times before I'm on the highest branch that can still carry my weight, pulling myself up on it so I can stand.

Though while I start running back, a single thought keeps popping up in my mind. If this is a space-faring race, human or otherwise, am I being watched through satellites of some kind, are they potentially even aiming some kind of orbital weapon at me in case I turn out to be a threat to them? Let's just work out the problems related to that once I get back to the remainder of the group and I have their information about the situation.

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Planet: Shanxi, Location: forest clearing 30 kilometres north of the capital, Time: a few minutes after the last scene, POV: Loki Odinsson.

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Ok, all the facts check out, this location is a human colony on another planet not in their home solar system, they have a number of space capable vehicles and at least a small fleet of them is stationed in and outside of orbit with how large the clump of human like life-signs I can feel are out there. However there is something a bit strange, while all signs point towards humans being the ones that live here, there is something decidedly different about the life-signs in comparison to the average human back on the Midgard I am familiar with….

Maybe it is because we are in a different dimension? A question for later, for now this should give enough information. Barnes suddenly becomes more alert, yes I can also hear some rustling now that I am not focusing so much on the effects of the spell. ''Person is nearing, most likely Steve but possibility of a hostile, approaching from the South.''

Stark stopped tinkering with the helmet of his suit, quickly adjusting a thing and then putting it over his head. Meanwhile I conjured a dagger, giving this one to Barns before creating another one for my own use. He gave me a thankful nod before focussing again while holding his hand to his ear. Then he sighed in relief causing me to lower my guard slightly. Almost certainly good news.

''Its Steve, he found what seems to be a farmstead with a road leading to it, both of them are close enough to Chinese designs that he thinks it likely that we are dealing with a space-faring faction of humans. He's also asking if Stark is currently able to fly decently enough, if yes we will be able to reach it within 10 minutes or so of travelling since it is barely nine kilometres away from us.''

Just as he finished talking Captain Rogers jumped out of a tree, rolling once hitting the ground before standing up in front of us. ''I heard Bucky relay pretty much everything I found out through the communicators, what did you guys manage to discover?'' A look shared between myself and Stark indicated I should go first, a shame that is likely to mean his news is less than good.

''I was able to discover this planet has more than 1 million sentient beings living on it, with a large enough portion of them being human that my rough planetary scan couldn't feel any other species. This is not their home planet like captain Rogers rightfully assumed, since there is a either a small fleet or one very large station in space where thousands of life forms are spread out near the planets orbit.

The inhabitants of the planet seem to have noticed us however since there is a move reminiscent of a planetary evacuation going on, though considering the size of our group chances are high it was instead caused by something else and Thanos just made this planet the exit of our interdimensional journey so that whatever else was approaching might finish us off if something happens.''

''So they most likely have some kind of observation post in space that is directed down towards the planet also, a satellite of some kind if nothing else?'' I nodded in answer to Starks question. ''Good, that gives it a much higher chance of them actually believing us on the topic of us travelling here through a dimensional portal.''

There was truth in that statement, the likelihood of them believing we were actual dimensional travellers and not some kind of genetic experiment humanity seems to love performing in modern times is much higher with them having actual proof of it recorded by their own devices. Now Stark is moving to speak again.

''Yeah ok, that's all good news, sadly enough I now have the duty of telling you all some bad news. We have as you all already know very little to no supplies to repair anything significant of any of our gear sets. This makes my current predicament even more problematic then it usually would be: the main flight control of my suit has become too heavily damaged to be of any use right now.

There is a backup installed that I activated and used, however since this was merely one of the many spare suits I brought out of storage and used once most of the other dozen or so got destroyed on the battlefield, that backup flight control is very much a backup, my ability to steer and actually control my flight will be extremely limited outside of flat open areas or planetary orbit.

If I try to fly any significant distance in this forest chances are high I will crash into something every other fifty meters or so without an AI available to assist me in controlling the suit.'' He breaks up at the last words and seems to whisper 'my children…' while forcing himself not to give in to grief.

I myself have a similar predicament, thinking back on everyone I had to leave behind back home, with the others being in similar situations so we respectfully ignore it and let him have the moment. He catches himself back shortly afterwards. ''But anyways to summarize it I will not be able to fly anywhere near that distance Rogers, however me walking would slow us down significantly, any solutions?''

The Captain nods. ''We can have either myself or Bucky carry you towards the area, while we will have to slow down a bit due to the problems inherent with carrying another person on your back through a forest, we'll still easily be able to travel at a speed of roughly 30 kilometres an hour if not faster, instead of the 7 or 8 kilometres per hour we would be limited to with you travelling on foot while in the suit.''

Stark looked between the two. ''Hmm that offer would make millions of women back home swoon captain, being carried on the back of either yourself or your friend the strong super soldier both very handsome men. I'll take Barnes, you will probably need to do most of the diplomacy or fighting if we come upon somebody Rogers, but Barnes, no feeling me up alright? I'm not ready for that type of relationship with you yet.''

At this jape, some of the tension that had been in the group was lost, with all of us laughing slightly, before Barnes continued it ''Oh Tony, don't break my heart! Why can't you let me feel that delicious body of yours?'' after that comment he put a fake look on his face as if appreciating Stark's physique, with everyone else nearly falling to the ground from how much we were laughing.

The captain recovered first and had to break it up. ''Ok, that was good guys, but we all know Bucky that you are more interested in strong females that can kick your arse with ease, and Tony, if you go on like this I might have to suggest a threesome between you, Bucky and your fiancée when we return.''

Suddenly Tony paled drastically ''No I'm good, I'll go up the back of your sidekick no problem.'' Bucky could be heard yelling ''hey'' but over everything my own laughter could still be heard. It was a sorely welcome change in the mood of our group, even if only for a moment.

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 **And this is chapter four of the rewrite. Okay I'm literally months behind my original schedule, so I'll keep this note short and start working on the other chapters. I have taken a few looks at what the next chapters are and nearly fell down crying with how badly they contrast with what I am actually intending to make of this story, and how much of a pain it would be to actually just go rewrite them.**

 **So instead of rewriting the remaining chapters, I'll be writing almost completely new chapters with parts of the old chapters used if they still fit. As can be seen in this chapter I realised just how much the scale of the conflict was off… I mean think about it I want to partially use scenes from the games of Mass Effect however for that I need humanity to actually have a good reason to be somewhat suspicious of specific species.**

 **A small incursion by less then 50.000 citadel personnel into human space in which a few thousand people die where it is pretty damn obvious they didn't have orders from high command to act as they did? Not really what I'm aiming for. I need it to be so that human leaders will have good reason to doubt that this incursion was done without support from other high-ranking members of the Turian Hierarchy or other less open support from high ranking officers in other species militaries.**

 **This in combination with the fact that the ships used by the Citadel will be much cheaper and easier to mass produce things means that there will be a much larger fleet and more forces from mercenary/non-council factions supporting it. More explanation on the how and why will be in the text of future chapters.**


	5. Shanxi arc chapter 3

Avengers of Mass Effect

Shanxi arc chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own either mass effect or the marvel cinematic universe, if I did I would not be writing this story, but making changes to the games or sitting besides Stan Lee during his moments in the movies.

'' Talk'' is regular oral communication/talking out loud

 **'TALK'** Is mental communication such as telepathy or communication with things that are controlled through brain waves. Might also be used in situations dealing with possession by some kind of being/force.

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Planet: Shanxi, Location: a farmstead roughly 20 kilometres north of the capital city. Time: POV: Lieutenant Armstrong

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Ok, they should be coming out of that forest any moment, there they are. Ok, I know the satellite control personnel told us that they looked like a strange bunch, but this is way more extreme than what I expected. I expected maybe jumpsuits in very strange colours or something like that, not what seems to be a 7 foot tall man dark blonde/brown haired man in a heavily modified black combat jumpsuit who is holding a shield in his hand, while standing in front of the others as if to shield them from damage.

Hell the others are nearly as strange if not even stranger, a 6 foot something black haired man in some kind of ancient armour, with what seems to be energy sparking between his fingers, a person of unknown height in what looks to be body shaped power armour that is aiming a palm that is glowing with blue energy at us, and last but not least another 6 foot something black haired man, but this one has some kind of black combat uniform, and what seems to be a metal arm.

However what is nearly the strangest about their appearance is just how many scratches, cuts, dents and burns can be seen on not only their armour and clothing but also all types of slight wounds on the visible parts of their bodies, on top of the kind of look I would think you would get from non-stop fighting for hours on an end. Were they part of some kind of battle before they entered the portal that lead them here? Also who were those two that they were fighting that didn't switch sides?

Well, once again I hope they are not going to attack us. If that blue energy on that power armour is any indication, their gear is probably a lot more advanced then what it looks like. Well, let's make contact. I suppose I'll try English first, then French, then Russian, then Chinese, and Spanish after that. If none of that works I can try Latin or German, but I am not sure how well I can hold a diplomatic conversation in either of those languages.

''Good afternoon, my name is Thomas Armstrong and I am a lieutenant in the Systems Alliance military. The Systems Alliance is the overarching organisation of all Terran governments, functioning as not only a defensive alliance against all others but also a point of communication and diplomacy between Terran nation states, both internal and external. We saw how you stepped out of what seemed to be a portal, and we would like to know what your intentions are and why you came here.'' Now let us hope I did not just gravely insult their culture or something like that.

''Good afternoon young man, I am Captain Steve Rogers, formerly United States armed forces, current leader of the Avengers and officer in the Wakandan Defence Force. Loki here '' and with this he indicated the black haired man behind him that had the strange energy held in his hand ''Says that his scans show that the population of this planet is human, and as you already just told us, not the home planet of this dimensions human race.''

Wait a moment, he said 'Loki', as in the God from Norse mythology? And 'This dimensions human race'. Shit we either have to do with super powered crazies, or we just stumbled upon something we have no defence against. At all. And something I can also see no possible way to truly defend against.

Let's hope these people are just escaped experiments from some shady organisation that thought their test subjects were re-incarnations of ancient Gods or something. Never thought I'd think of a sentence like that with hope, but anyways I should resume contact, and assume that at least a decent part of what he's telling is the truth, since there was a portal-like object at their entrance and unless intel has fucked up really badly there isn't any organisation in Terran space that can actually use those things to travel. And we've only just now made contact with those aliens at the relay, the chances of them already having human infiltrators somehow is low enough to be considered non-existent.

''Yes sir, this planet has as far as I am informed a near only human population. And as your scans show, it is also not the home planet of the human race. I apologise, but would your companions please be so kind as to introduce themselves to us?'' That would make this go a while lot easier on the communication front. He nods gesturing to his companions for them to introduce themselves.

Ok, so far so good. I don't fully believe the 'from another dimension' thing yes, but they can at the very least be reasoned with so even if they are crazies this doesn't have to end in violence. Which we would most likely loose in any case so that is a very positive thing. I'll have to ensure it is kept that way. ''Whom is interested in starting off the round of introductions?''

The one in the fully closed suit of powered armour froze for a moment and I could hear a very soft murmur, he's probably contacting them on comms and the only reason I can even hear that fact is because it is almost completely silent outside of that and well for me my own heartbeat though that last one is caused mostly by just how much this situation stresses me out.

''Well, since you asked so nicely, my name is Tony Stark, a very humble engaged billionaire, creator of the Iron Man suits and also the sole manufacturer of Arc Reactor Energy.'' The newly named Tony Stark said while the face-plate of his suit slid up, though grief entered his tone at those last words, they most likely remind him of a person he cared for that he now won't be able to see any time soon possibly even never again if the portal story is actually the truth.

As for looks, he seems to be a middle aged handsome black haired man, that while not having a baby face of any kind also isn't quite as rugged as the other three are. He also seems to be charismatic, his words sound inviting and he has a voice that most people wouldn't mind listening to. However that sadness and grief is just nearly overwhelming.

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Loki POV

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The grief is just pouring out of him, either I or sergeant Barnes need to intervene otherwise, our opponents might notice and try to take advantage of it. ''And I am Loki of Asgard, a prince of said people.'' At this the ''Systems Alliance'' group, whatever that means, turned towards me. ''Wait of that people? Isn't it supposed to be a realm, a location?'' And now this is making me grief once more, damn it. Too much happened in a way too short amount of time.

''Until shortly ago, Asgard was also the indication for a location, a very big city the size of a small planet. However, for some reason, a family member of mine called Hela decided she wanted to be a dictator and overthrew our government then went on to kill most of our soldiers. A while after that she and Surtur decided they wanted to have a fight in the middle of the city, and we barely managed to evacuate whomever of our people was still alive before they destroyed it and the planet with it.''

Nothing of that banter is happening yet sadly enough, though it is understandable, I myself am also not up to it. We really should have thought this meeting through more before we stepped out of that forest. And we should also have understood more about how much all the tragedy of the past weeks would affect us.

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Thomas Armstrong POV

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Ok, now I'm starting to believe their story of being from another dimension more. You cannot fake the amount of grief and sadness there is in his eyes, or the emotion in his voice when talking about his people. Also, the sadness that this Tony Stark had about him while he was talking about the energy? Only now I realize that there was also this pride in it, possibly some people he loved were part of the project to create that energy and he is very proud of them and their work. But he is grieving because they died a recently?

I heard the brown haired man that hadn't been introduced yet clear his throat ''My name is James Buchanan Barnes, alias the White Wolf, formerly the Winter Soldier and before that sergeant in the U.S armed forces. Now that we've all been introduced, can we maybe go inside that farmstead? Please do talk to the civilians hiding in there first so they don't have a heart attack upon seeing us walking in there with you.

I with how good I look, Steve with the fact that compared to normal people he's a giant, Loki well, he can talk his way into the pants of a completely lesbian woman or a completely straight man if he wanted to, so he would probably get them to hyperventilate by complementing them.'' here the soldiers started laughing thinking it to be a joke, but most fell silent at Loki's wane smile, which told them this might actually have happened before.

''And Stark, well he looks like a rip-off terminator, anyone who hasn't dealt with him or our brand of crazy in general before might start running for their lives.'' I could hear the man called Tony Stark yell an undignified voice 'Hey!' While the troops laughed again, with Barnes continuing ''You know it's true Stark. The first time your fiancée that had worked with you for years saw the thing she nearly had a heart attack, let alone some old farmers that live in a small out of the way community.''

Ok, that at least makes everything less tense, though the slang use of terminator is very classic instead of more recent. ''Lieutenant Armstrong? If I may be so bold as to ask you the current date?'' Says the man named Steve Rogers. Let's see, considering what they were saying, if the thing of them being from another dimension is really true, they are probably from an dimension that while having more advanced energy technology, is mainly caused by a few individuals and might actually be as much as a full century behind us chronologically.

''Well, we might want to go inside and let you sit down before I tell you?'' He growls ''Tell me the year soldier.'' At the frightening idea of angering a 7 foot tall man that is now wielding some kind of fireball in his right hand, I say ''The year is 2157, sir.'' And I'm more afraid of what might happen next then that I've ever been in my entire life.

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Planet: Citadel, Location: Citadel Council chambers, Time: The same time at which the Avengers and Systems Alliance have first contact with each other. POV: 3rd Person

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If one could look into the citadel council chambers at this moment of the day, one would come upon a very strange scene, with the Asari councillor swearing in every language she knew, the Turian councillor ramming his face-plate against the table and the Salarian councillor taking multiple head-ache relieving pills while stress-eating some fried snacks.

The reason behind this scene was that a fleet of more than 120 Turian ships had less than an hour ago ceased communications, after sending a message that could pretty much be summarized as ''Underway to bring a race of primitive apes to heel by occupying their home-world.'' Beforehand said fleet had requested at least another 50 ships as re-enforcements including a number of troop transport ships and ground forces, who were on their way to join it as far as the council knew, also without them being able to contact this group.

The problem with this all being that the council needed only a few minutes minute to figure out that the world indicated wasn't the home-world at all seen nor were the race primitives in either the technological or the economic sense.

This could be seen by the fact that the race had ships that while worse in the Mass Effect department then Turian military ships, still equalled most of those in use by military of the less quality oriented minor species such as the Batarians and Hanar. On top of that the race had a strong enough economy to then use more armour on those ships then even the Krogan did back when they still had a fleet and laser weaponry that was stronger and more advanced than those currently in use by any of the Citadel militaries.

This was after they found out from what information they could get from the data sent with the message that the world the Turian fleet was heading to not matching descriptions of said home-world from that same data. It also appeared that the group that the Turian fleet had faced was unlike what the commanding officer thought not their second fleet or a home defence fleet, but instead a patrol/exploration flotilla.

Since the race had enough ships to assign what appeared to be a dreadnought, admittedly a small one, to an exploratory or patrol flotilla, it would be reasonable to assume that they themselves had at least a few, but probably a lot more than 'a few' actual dreadnoughts. And usually, especially new races, had entire fleets to accompany a single dreadnought because of how much easier it is when using Mass Effect technology to make more than twenty smaller ships in comparison to 1 big one of the same size as only 4 or 5 of the smaller ones put together.

This meant that when said race would come to either free their colony or avenge the deaths of their people, Arterius would have awakened and enraged what would most likely be a sleeping giant that would strike back at either the Turians, or the council in its entirety.

With them already facing enough problems with the Batarian Hegemony supporting pirate raids stretching their navies thin, and with most of their client races barely having a big enough fleet to defend their own territories, let alone the territories of other races any war of a scale bigger than one with a decently sized and well organised group of pirates would end up becoming a disaster, both PR and resource wise.

''Why was this general actually given command of a 120 ship fleet at all in the first place!'' Tevos, the Asari councillor could be heard yelling. The sound of her actually raising her voice in anger at all, instead of it being the calculated, but relatively welcoming and diplomatic tone she always used was enough for the Turian councillor to sigh and finally stop slamming his faceplate into the table.

''A patrol consisting of 5 ships had noticed a mass relay that was defunct only an hour beforehand being registered as active by their relay scanners, and once they headed there a small group of some 4 ships was flying around, having come through it shortly beforehand. The commanding officer sent this information to the nearest Turian patrol quick reaction force, which just so happened to be a 40 ship quick reaction force of ships assigned to deter large mercenary and smuggler groups from settling through the area.

Contact was lost, with the patrol group moments after this and with the QRF a few hours afterward, so command assumed that whatever came through the Mass Relay was hostile, at the very least equal sized to the Turian QRF and also technologically near our level.  
After this a group of 120 or so ships was scrambled together, plus the closest officer that had anywhere near high enough rank to actually assume command of the fleet, which happened to be Arterius.

Later reconstruction on hand of whatever evidence we could gather though showed the opposite, with the patrol group intentionally ceasing all communications to make it look like there was an attack and said group then attacking the vessels coming out of the Mass Relay, and winning the fight against the surprised opponents, but being defeated by a 20 or so ships big flotilla that came through to find out what had happened to the group that went through before them.

The patrol flotilla entered the area shortly after this and saw a fleet with multiple destructed ships near them, some of those ships being Turian, and decided to attack straight away under the assumption that the non-Turian group were the ones to initiate conflict, but had only won at great cost through luck. It turned out however that as we already noticed, the ships were of a relatively high quality, much better armoured then their Turian counterparts and had as much as I am ashamed to say it, a more competent commanding officer then the Turian flotilla did.

This fight continued towards mutual destruction, until Arterius entered the area while flanking the non-Turian fleet, and immediately attacking them too. Caught off-guard and with nearly everything except their biggest ships already dead, they were quickly destroyed after that, but not before Arterius managed to capture a cruiser grade ship, and pull this information out of their partially deleted information storage.

He quickly called upon re-enforcements fleet wise in the form of another 40 ship QRF, and deciding he needed to invade the world after the Relay to force them to comply, also called upon an invasion force of near 20000 infantry troops to supplement those he already had on his fleet + the freighters to transport them and some in atmosphere support vehicles such as a number of hover-tanks, low altitude APC vehicles and gunships. Not deeming anything stronger then this necessary with his complete confidence in having orbital superiority. Most of the lower officers of this invasion force are fanatics, either in their loyalty to him, or in how they treat everyone who isn't a member of one of our three species.''

Tevos looked thoughtful for the moment ''Is there any way a local Salarian STG team can do anything about this?'' The Salarian councillor shook his head ''The local team went silent with the fleet, so either they agree with Arterius or he somehow managed to convince them that they are working on council orders.''

Tevos sighs, finally sits down and says ''Is there anything we can do, outside of gathering the Destiny Ascension, hundreds of ships from the councils personally assigned fleet, go towards that Relay as fast as possible and hope we are in time to make enough of a difference for these, what did they call themselves anyways that seems to not even be included in the message sent, to be willing to talk to us instead of fight us for years in a war possibly nearly as devastating as the Krogan rebellions were?''

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Planet: Shanxi, Location: shield generator guard post, Time: At roughly the same time Gen. Williams hears the news of his brother being in command of said post. POV: Lieutenant Williams

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Unlike what his brother probably thought, Lieutenant Williams was not actually doing nothing. No, he and the other guards stationed at the shield generator were fighting for their lives against enemy infiltrators that would pop up from under some kind of cloaking device every once in a while and try to kill them, though they oft did not succeed in such attempts.

That last part was heavily related to the fact that the IFF's they were using to not hit eachother were picked up by the System Alliance AI working to support the defenders, causing them to be able to see the enemy if the enemy decided to come somewhat close to their current position.

The problem with this however was that they were still pinned down by the enemy with no cover anywhere near them outside of the walls they were hiding behind. After a few more moments of this lieutenant Williams received a message on his wrist-computer that the shield generator was being accessed by an unauthorized user.

''Damn it we need to get to it before they damage it too badly for us to repair it.'' He said, while thinking about a way that would give him and his troops the chance to actually hit their opponents. He had an idea, grimaced, but after looking at the message once more, steel entering his eyes. It was all or nothing right now, and with nothing they would probably be dead soon anyways. He turned towards the only still combat effective sergeant under his command.

''I'm going to do something incredibly risky, but since we have no communications, no exit and no grenades it will be necessary. I will go into the open, taking all their attention and trying to take out whomever is sabotaging the shield. Your group will deliver cover fire for me, and try to take out as many of the enemies in this room possible while our AI support ensures they will not be able to open the door after I manage to go through. Understood?''

''Understood sir. For what it is worth it's been an honour serving with you sir.'' The lieutenant nods ''Thank you sergeant, but I have a lot to make up for, now let's go.'' Oh well, let's hope this goes according to what goes for the plan in this situation. The shield generator room is straight ahead, through that door, then the second door to the right.

From there I have to go through a small hallway to the armoured door in front of the generator room. I get up, fire a few salvo's at where the heat sensors of my armour tell me the enemies are, run as fast as I can towards the door, its somehow working! Once inside I close the door behind me, a nice metal shield against the enemy shots, wait why does my left arm not respond to commands anymore?

Shit I somehow also didn't notice that I dropped my rifle because of it while in that room and my side-arm is the standard non-detachable heatsink model, which is really useful as a backup weapon with near infinite ammo as long as you can rest it moment after using it, very much a pain in the ass during a close quarters fire-fight. I quickly break the opening mechanism of the door, which should close off the possibility of them opening it manually while the AI can shut down any chance of it being opened through hostile electronical means.

Hopefully this will hold them for long enough for the others to take care of them or re-enforcements to arrive. The second door to the right opens, with a somewhat amphibian alien stepping out and asking something in a language I do not understand, stopping surprised as soon as he sees me.

I step forward, pressing my pistol nearly into his chest and fire the last of its heatsink into him, and luckily enough the shields these aliens seem to have didn't activate due to how close to him the gun was. After feeling horrible pain in my stomach area, I look down. While completely surprised he somehow managed to get a shot off into my stomach in the exact location while my armour was still weakened from the explosion of a grenade earlier. I need to get to the generator and take out whomever is trying to destroy it right now, before I fall over dead because of blood loss. No time to wait for the pistol to cool down.

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3rd person POV

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The mortally wounded form of Lieutenant Williams could be seen moving through the door that the Salarian STG operative had just left. After which he moved through the hallway as fast as he could and opened the heavy door that lead to the shield generator room, where he saw another Salarian about to enter some commands into the screen that controlled the shield generator.

With whatever energy he had left, he jumped the remaining distance just as his opponent was turning around towards the sound, and stabbed him in his side while tackling him, hoping to hit something important. Both fell to the ground, with the Salarian beneath cursing himself and Arterius for underestimating this race and with Lieutenant Williams being at peace, though he knew he would die, he had potentially saved hundreds if not thousands of people.

He felt that his death was a small price to pay for that. 'Thank you brother for having cared for me and all your attempts to give me a good life. I just hope that he doesn't take my death too hard, he needs to be able to continue on, this place will now need a strong commander more than ever.' Were his last thoughts before he died.

A few minutes after this, the troops sent by the general to man the shield generator arrived, and with their assistance the guards they managed to take out all surviving Salarians. The base's AI opened the door for them, behind which they found the dead Salarian in the first room, and the corpse of both the Salarian and the Lieutenant in the shield generator room.

After having somebody check the shield generator, they found out that while damaged and thus degraded the shielding function is still functional, meaning that if the Lieutenant had taken even a few seconds longer, they would instead of just being able to repair it within a few days, actually have to replace the entire generator the parts for which would have to be shipped there from either Earth or the Hydra system.

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 **I end this now, because I need to stop somewhere and wanted to keep this chapter below five-thousand words. In case you have any advice, please review and I will try to work it into the story if it seems like it could cause my work to become something of higher quality.**

 **Edit 7-5-2019: And I'm done with writing this in the word version, I'll upload it as soon as I have both the time and a stable enough internet connection to work out whatever problems converting it to a doc will cause. I hope once again that it is an interesting read.**


	6. Shanxi arc chapter 4

Avengers of Mass Effect

Shanxi arc chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own either mass effect or the marvel cinematic universe, if I did I would not be writing this story, but making changes to the games or sitting besides Stan Lee during his moments in the movies.

'' Talk'' is regular oral communication/talking out loud

 **'TALK'** Is mental communication such as telepathy or communication with things that are controlled through brain waves. Might also be used in situations dealing with possession by some kind of being/force.

Authors note: As a side note that was probably already somewhat visible in the last chapter, instead of the European union discovering the prothean ruins on mars, in this story a combined American-Chinese expedition discovered it in 2135. This because I find that without this amount of time between the discovery and the first contact war the weapons created with it wouldn't be cost effective enough yet to be given to militia instead of giving them much older non-mass effect gear.

And Shanxi is a Chinese colony with systems alliance forces both as part of its defence force and retired systems alliance officers training and leading its militia, while the remainder of the militia is made up out of people that moved to it from China or other colonies as colonists. The reservists and Chinese regulars are logically under direct control of the Chinese government however. And with that out of the way, let's begin.

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Planet: none, Location: Bridge of a dreadnought in the Turian fleet near Relay 314. Year : 2157, Date: ?, POV: Desolas Arterius

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Even a complete outsider that didn't know the first thing about me could have seen that I, Turian General Desolas Arterius was angry, very angry. The reason for this was the fact that I had not heard back from the Salarian STG infiltration team that had been sent to the planet and as such I had already concluded that they had already failed somehow due to their own incompetence.

''Those incompetent amphibians, they cannot be trusted to do their own jobs correctly, once again it falls to Turians to do all the hard work. How long until our last transport freighters will join us here? Also any news from the allies we contacted to assist us in this matter?''

A communication officer replied ''It will be four hours until the transport freighters arrive sir, while they were able to load and start the journey much earlier and faster than expected, they saved 8 hours on that actually, the consequence is that they have run into some problems with too hurriedly repaired engines on a freighter that is transporting most of the rations for the Batarian mercenary company you had them bring along.

As such they have been slowed down by slightly more than two and a half standard hours. Meanwhile the Eclipse mercenaries have reacted positively to your message and are sending over all of their naval forces that can get here within a reasonable amount of time, in total they have coming in on two cruisers, ten frigates and a dozen freighters plus twenty something smaller troop transports, with as their ground forces some eight thousand infantry with mech support in near equal numbers.''

That is comforting to know and also very advantageous for us. As I give him a nod in silent confirmation, he continues. ''We have also managed to contact the nearby Asari Republic you mentioned, Minbara? They have agreed on sending a portion of their forces to support us, though it will mainly be logistical support in space in the form of another eight freighters, however their ground troops will consist of four thousand infantry, no mech support with them though.''

All this positive news is doing wonders for my temper, good. ''Does every member of the fleet already on location know what we are heading towards and what we are going to do?'' The communications officer replied ''As far as we know all naval personnel and army officers do know our reasons for heading towards that planet and what we are going to do there, though we do not know how well the word has been spread out among the non-officer members of the land forces.''

I nod at the answer, it is decent enough. ''That is good enough for me. Have the officers give their troops a bit more rations and let them rest for now, we might not have too much of it in the coming weeks or even months while putting order to these primitives.'' The officer saluted ''Yes general!''.

At this I nodded once more, then left the bridge to return to my quarters. Some of the lower ranked personnel could be heard sighing in relief all over at my seemingly infamous temper not having gotten the best of him while they were near. Those were quickly stifled though as if to try to not be noticed by their officers. Usually I would go back and lash out to ensure discipline and order were kept, but today I'm in too good of a mood to bother. It also has admittedly been a stressful day for them and myself both.

Hmm, this is such a nice opportunity though, I get to bring a new still somewhat primitive race that is however more than advanced enough to be a genuine threat and with certain technologies we can profit from under the heel of the council, which will cause the Primarch to respect me more and at worst have him make me the military governor of a decently developed planet, at best promote me and give me permanent command of a fleet the size of the one I'm currently commanding.

My brother will also profit from this, after all a spectre in training can never have enough experienced military and political connections that have served their race and the citadel faithfully. Considering the looks of this race I can probably even get some more support for this from a number of individual Asari Republics since I will have given them access to a race that looks like a bi-gendered mix between them and the suit rats.

Thinking about this just brings a smile to my face, there is one problem though, that hypocritical little bitch that sits on the council in name of the Asari might try to get me in trouble for this. How do I manage to either make her see that this is a good idea, or otherwise convince Sparatus and the Salarian councillor to overrule any attempt from her side to punish me for this through somewhat legal means.

I mean Sparatus was a front-line combat officer during his term in the military and one of the few survivors of the battle between the Citadel diplomatic team and those beasts that call themselves Yagh, he will almost certainly understand just why we should show any new race just who is in charge otherwise they'll just kill whatever diplomats we send to them.

Meanwhile the entire Salarian culture is somehow still shell-shocked by the Krogan Rebellions even though it was tens of generations ago for them, and blame some 75% of all their problems on both the Krogan and the conflict itself. With the primitives actually having attacked a patrol group first, how they slap so much armour on their ships and the seemingly shared mindset 'We shall never surrender!' that is for the most part absent in every race in the Galaxy except Turians and Krogan so far I can easily enough spin them to be little more than more intelligent, more advanced and thus far more dangerous versions of Krogan.

And considering that Tevos was actually alive for both of those events once they bring their arguments about this to her chances are pretty high that she will actually follow along with it just not wanting to take the chance of either of them being right about how bad it can go if we do something, while uncaring enough about anyone other then her own people that she won't make too much fuss about the fact that I actually did something about it besides maybe a public reprisal about how I could have done it less violently.

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Planet: Shanxi, Location: Farmstead roughly 20 kilometres North of the capital city. Time: a few minutes after the battle of the shield generator is over.

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Steve POV

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This, it is like waking up from being an ice block for years all over again. Though this time, the only people from my time that could even potentially be found are these three that came with me due to the dimensional barrier. Wait, what was just said of me having a fireball in my hand? I looked down and it was true, in my right hand a ball of fire seemed to be slowly growing.

Ok, that thing needs to go away if this conversation is going to be peaceful in any way shape or form, so well let's see how did Wanda gather/let go of a gathered amount of power. 'Image slowly stopping a flow of power going to your hand and then picturing the creation slowly going out of existence' I think she said.

And the fireball is already gone, does that mean it works the same way as Wanda's powers did, or is it more likely that the power needs some kind of emotion behind it to actually work. Will have to work on controlling it though, don't want to accidentally set something on fire.

''Ok, so now that we've found out the old man is a pyrotechnic somehow, can we focus more on the fact that we're now in a dimension that is in the mid 22nd century and none of you seem to have gear that people should have by now? I mean, my suit is great and all for its time, but I made the first version of it with a week of work in a cave with a workshop that had more in common with a medieval blacksmith shop then with a modern workplace in 2008.

Surely somebody should have by now created at least something similar to it and made a higher quality version with better, more modern technology in it a form of standard gear for the military of an organisation like the Systems Alliance seems to be?''

Actually, now that he mentions it, Tony is right, there is very little in the way of high-tech gear visible. It might be a lot smaller so we're overlooking it or not deployed yet. However after seeing a few super-humans running through a forest at what was close to the maximum speed of cars in cities around the globe in our time, they would probably have deployed them already if they had anything of the likes with them.

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Lieutenant Armstrong POV

Wait a second, did he just say that he built a version of that power armour in a cave with very limited supplies? With only a week time to create it no less? Ok, those guys over in Europe were probably right with their whole thing about Terran designed energy gear being the way to go, if this is the kind of results it could have given that early on if more of our focus was on it.

Suddenly the private charged with communications comes running up to me ''Sir, sir, there has been an attack on the base, specifically the shield generator! Command wants us to return as fast as possible.'' Wait what?

''Since when can people get into that general area at all without being noticed, especially since the base has been on high alert the entire time?'' The soldier seems to shiver a bit and starts looking into the forest around us afraid of as if something is going to jump out of nowhere and grab him.

''Apparently they used some kind of cloaking devices, the damage is currently being assessed. The only reason our troops could even fucking see the bastards at all was that the A.I. assigned to the base somehow managed to turn its sensors into detectors for emissions made by the IFF system they used. Their cyber security apparently sucks.''

After a moment of thought I turn towards the 4 beings we were sent to negotiate with ''If you want to negotiate further, either join us or run along with our vehicles, we will need to head back to the planets capital right now to get the civilians we have with us to safety and to prepare ourselves for a defence against an at least partially unknown enemy.''

They all seemed to look at each-other for a few seconds then the former captain seemed to nod, after which he turned towards me ''We will join you, though only Stark and Loki will ride with you on the vehicles, both Sgt. Barnes and I could use the exercise of running a distance.'' I raised an eyebrow ''Are you sure you can keep up? I mean we're going to be going near 100 km per hour for roughly 20 kilometres.'' Both men that were supposed to go running seemed to smile slightly.

''I am capable of overtaking vehicles going at that speed without too many problems currently, and Bucky here has a much more speed and agility centred version of my serum, where as I have a much more strength and endurance centred version of it. The only reason why we even have to put in effort at all currently is that we've been fighting a near constant battle for the past few days.''

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Planet: Shanxi, Location: Planetary SA military headquarters, Time: Moments after the battle for the shield generator has been won by the Terran soldiers, POV: General Williams.

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After talking about potential scenarios in case we are attacked by either the group that landed planet side from the portal or dealing with a potential invasion from space, I stopped the call to the Captain since I needed to think for a moment. After sitting there for a while waiting on news from either the diplomatic group or the militia sent to the shield generator, not knowing exactly how much time had passed, Sergei appeared in front of me, seemingly somber. ''Sir, we have an incoming call from the shield generator facility, the caller pages it as extremely urgent.''

Ok, that is unusual, the only thing that should have happened there is my brother being removed from his position as commanding officer of the facility and a militia officer replacing him. It also should not have taken anywhere near this long. ''Patch the call through.'' When the A.I. did so, an older, slightly accented voice came through the speakers.

''General, this is Major Xing, I have finally been able to establish contact with you, we found the reason why your brother wasn't reporting and have dealt with it. The facility was under attack by enemy infiltrators with cloaking devices, these same infiltrators also somehow managed to set-up a device that disabled any communications going in or out from the facility even though their cyber security should have been a piece of cake for our A.I. to defeat, it only stopped once we actually destroyed the physical device. Somehow any communication once inside their range did work, but that is not the problem currently.''

This... I had expected a lot to potentially be going on, but not this. However the fact that it was only the Major on the call and not both the Major and my brother caused a cold feeling to grip me ''How many casualties and wounded did we suffer from this assault Major?'' She spoke up, a slight sadness creeping into her voice.

''Luckily enough only four of our troops died sir, six of the remaining 16 have been wounded, none of them life threatening luckily enough due to your brother's heroic actions during the fight. Sadly enough sir, I do not know how to tell this, but those actions cost him his life.'' No, no I might have complained about him, but I loved him, please let this be some kind of cruel joke, let him be alive.

''He died taking down the infiltrator that was busy with the generator itself, without those actions the shield would be completely un-repairable right now and the civilians would be little more than target practice for whatever enemies come to us.''

My brother, dead. The last words he has heard from his own family were insults. The bastards that have done this are going to pay for both his death. And I will personally put a bullet through the head of whatever piece of shit is behind it all! My voice was ice cold when I spoke up next. ''Tell me everything. That is an order.''

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Planet: Shanxi, Location: A convoy 20 kilometres North of the planetary capital, Time: Moments after the Avengers agreed to join the Alliance convoy, POV: Tony Stark.

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Ok, now that the talks are mostly over, I should ask Steve. Hmm still strange to say that name as an ally, even after the week. Let's see if that mental link still works 'Loki does the link still work between all of us?' I got my answer, but not from Loki 'Yes Stark, we can still hear voices inside our minds. What seems to be the problem outside of being classified as insane if anybody finds out?' Barnes, hmm there was actually a bit of cheer in there.

'Well I did some scans and these people either A: stagnated badly after the 2000's, or B: This dimension didn't have most of the people that accelerated advancements like in ours. With this I mean like, in our world the Nazi's had energy weapons derived from an overpowered cube, and as such the allies gained the need to find a way to respond to that and it also caused us to realize such things were truly possible in the first place. This then caused supersoldier serums, the creation of arc technology and so forth.

In this dimension, there was no Asgard, no cosmic cubes, and as far as we currently know no or nowhere near as many alien invasions. This might have taken away the impulse to actually improve to the level we were already at in our time. While saying as easy as breathing for me to actually hack the onboard computers of their armour and communication devices without being noticed would be a complete and utter lie, it was somewhat easier than the Cyber security sparring matches me and Vision used to have.

One of the main things were a large number of their advancements are apparently based on is something called Element Zero. However, this element is horrible at using things like energy weapons, faster than light sensors, creating actually intelligent A.I's or V.I's as they call those things and a load of other things but I couldn't get those quickly from their devices without alerting them that somebody was hacking them in the first place.

Meaning that older not yet upgraded technologies and already somewhat weak A.I's had to support and lead their much more numerous and inferior V.I brethren in their Cyber defence against anything trying to invade like me and as could be expected of a man good enough with this that I would actually be able to defeat their A.I in direct cyber sparring matches without too many problems, I managed to succeed.

If any of my children were here they would have been able to just steamroll everything these guys had without them even noticing, hell they could have taken over all of the space ships around the planet and set them on a crash course into each-other and they wouldn't have noticed until they were already on their way, their cyber-security is that bad. What is even more surprising, apparently their enemy somehow had even WORSE cybersecurity.

As in seemingly only V.I., no A.I. and then those V.I. are weaker than the Systems Alliance versions. Wouldn't surprise me if the moment they get ships of any kind into the Solar System I'll be able to just hack into them and learn all their militaries darkest secrets within minutes even though I wouldn't be able to understand the language they are using.

If this turns into an actual full swing war the Systems Alliance will probably be able to just de-activate the life-support on their enemies ships once they actually understand the language before more than a single volley of shots can be fired by either side. Of course the enemy will learn from this later on but the Systems Alliance will have the advantage long enough early on to win a war as long as they manage to defeat them before the opponents probably superior industry or manpower can be properly mobilized.'

My children, I might never be able to hold them again, never knowing what happens to any of them. NO, now is not the time to get lost in sadness. If I do I might not be able to provide intelligence for the others if this so called Systems Alliance decides to turn on us. 'Are you alright Stark? Never mind, I apologize for that slip-up, none of us are truly alright at the moment.'

I hear Steve's voice in my mind, and though it is a bit awkward, his attempt at comforting me does calm me down a bit. I have friends and allies here that can and will take on world devouring Titans, hell two of them are Gods, and they want to get back to their loved ones just as much as I do. There is nearly nothing that will truly be able to stop us if we work as a team.

'No Rogers it isn't a problem, I'm relatively fine now. Ok, can the two of you keep up with these guys while running? Also, I just checked, apparently they were really attacked, by some kind of unknown race, I cannot pull up the physical resemblances yet. Loki, is there a way to adjust your spell to scan this planet to specifically look at non-human sentient beings and their locations, in case there are still some left behind?'.

'Keeping up with them shouldn't be too much of a problem, from their info we'll be going less than 100 km per hour, my max speed is 120 but I can keep that up for only about ten minutes, a speed of 100km though I can usually keep up for closer to an hour. Though right now I'd only be able to last for some thirty minutes at it. Before anyone asks I also don't know how that shit works. With Steve now being a God in addition to his slightly better version of the Serum he should be able to keep up with that with ease for roughly twelve hours with barely any or no rest.' Barnes replied.

'And sadly enough Stark, while I would be able to detect if there were still non-humans on an area as large as the entire planet, unless I got the right feel of this specific species it would also detect beings like the sergeant and the captain, so I could just as well be detecting the enhanced of this version of humanity while thinking I was detecting invading aliens.'

Damn, that would have been nice to know. Wait he said he can sense enhanced, though he would see them as non-human? 'Can you still try to do it? If you only detect say three or four of them, it will show us that neither are there any aliens, nor does this system Alliance have many enhanced or in other words super-humans.' If it did come up nearly empty, well all the more positive for us for now. Though if these guys are really protectors and the invaders are agents of this Dimensions version of Thanos we're fucked.

.

 **End**

 **Ok I have to stop the chapter here, otherwise the story wouldn't have any updates in a while. After this I'm going to reread all previous chapters and try to edit them enough to take out some of the more glaring mistakes in them. Thank you everyone for following/liking this story, and I hope this chapter was enjoyable to read. As always, please do review and tell me what I did right and what I did wrong, and have a nice day.**

 **Edit 8-5-2019: I am done rewriting this chapter, was a pain to do so but it is finally done. The main changes in this chapter are rewriting it so that I could use less different POV's, expanding upon the parts of both the Citadel Council and Desolas and lastly well… making Desolas less of a Caricature and more of an actual if elitist and hypocritical person.**

 **Once I m done rewriting the events described in the chapters posted up untill I brought out the time-line chapter I'll look into making chapter 1 more pleasant to read before continuing to work on chapter two of the time-line while also doing work on the updates for my other stories.  
**


	7. Shanxi arc chapter 5

Avengers of Mass Effect

Shanxi arc chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own either mass effect or the marvel cinematic universe, if I did I would not be writing this story, but making changes to the games or sitting besides Stan Lee during his moments in the movies.

'' Talk'' is regular oral communication/talking out loud

 **'TALK'** Is forced mental communication such as reaper telepathy or communication with things that are controlled through brain waves. Will also be used in situations dealing with possession by some kind of being/force.

'Thought' This is used when in more gentle communication, such as Loki connecting the rest of the avengers with him through telepathy.

Author's notes: In this chapter we will mainly see how things are going on the home-fronts, so the Citadel and Earth. This chapter also hopefully gives a more indepth insight into the political side of things. The next chapter will be a time-line chapter, the one after that the second chapter of that time-line.

Also, something I might have forgotten to explain before, spoken language native to the person from who's perspective we are seeing events will always be written as English, while if they meet a person/group that speaks a language that isn't their natural language that they don't have a translation of in their omnitool/translator either for some reason, the language will be written in how the actual language works. For example:

Desolas Arterius POV

Watching the video feed gave me some chills, the video feed was showing these 'Human's' re-enforcements landing planet-side from some kind of massive support vessels -the damn things were bigger than his damn dreadnoughts!- going in high atmosphere and dropping troops that used some kind of ancient gliders to land on the ground, while behind them shuttles with ground vehicles attached to them were making their way down.

This was forcing the ground troops to send more of its already near depleted reserves to intercept them, and were trying to setup a defensive line against long range attacks from the invaders.

Only for two what seemed to be enemy officers to yell something my omnitool didn't translate. _''Voorwaarts, in naam van vrijheid en de koning!'' (''Forward for freedom and the king!'') ''Chargée! En nom de la Belgique et la reine!'' (''Charge! In the name of Belgium and the Queen!'')_ their troops reacting with some kind of shared shout or cheer, and charging forward towards our not yet ready lines while firing dozens if not hundreds of different weapon types on the run, causing further disarray in our lines. With energy beams slicing through the infantries shields, explosions all around them and even ancient projectile weapons and flamethrowers felling proud Turians. But the worst truly began when they reached the line.

As seen in this example, languages that aren't native to the person will be written in cursive, while if that language isn't English there will also be a ( ) behind it that translates it into English for the reader. An exception to this will be titles or positions, like the German name for the position commander in chief or the Quarian title for a religious leader.

These will be used even if we are seeing things from the POV of a German or a Quarian respectively, and as such will always have a translation behind it.

...

Planet: Earth/Terra. Location: Buckingham Palace, Year: 2157 A.C, Date: The 1st of June

...

? POV

.

Ok, this is going to be one of the most important meetings in our history, and probably also the first where half the people represented in it are not there in person but by hologram. ''Have there been any last minute information updates, Jacob?'' I asked my old friend Jakob Rutte.

''No my king, there haven't been any updates since you last asked, though please do use a more formal way of speech in the meeting. I know you are friendly and on a first name bases with most if not all of the people at this meeting, but this will be both recorded and potentially released to the public at a later date as part of a PR campaign, so we should take precautions to be presented in such a way that the people know we consider their safety a very serious and important business.''

Sigh, I would have protested as is our normal routine, but we both know he's right. This morning 8 AM GMT time the Chinese got an automated message from their shield generator in Shanxi that somebody had performed a partially successful sabotage mission against said shield generator. British spies picked it up, because the Chinese for some reason we do not understand at all haven't updated their cyber security ever since they started using large swaths of V.I. units lead and controlled by a small number of organic A.I's as their cyber defence.

Of course the Chinese declined to share this fact with the rest of the world, and also didn't lift their threat against us in case we decide to send our fleet to support Shanxi. One hour later however, the Systems alliance 2nd fleet admiral Kastanie Drescher called all leaders of countries that had spoken out against the Chinese and American decision to not let anybody besides one of their own fleets be sent to assist Shanxi together for a meeting at Buckingham Palace.

Which is why we're here now, together with ambassadors from France, Germany, the Vatican, Belgium and Great Britain. As we neared the door, our bodyguards showed the identity papers, a formality really since there had already been a check at the entrance of the building, and they exchanged nods with their British counterparts.

The guards then opened the doors and one of them announced _''Hereby announcing that his majesty Willem-Alexander the second of the Dutch Union, Dutch Union prime-minister Jakob Rutte, Dutch Union Defence Minister Maria van Vlimmeren and Dutch Union Commandant der Strijdkrachten(Commander of the armed forces) Leia Bauer have arrived.''_  
Nice to hear somebody finally actually using the translated version of our official country name instead of just the old 'Netherlands', because while 'Netherlands' has a nice ring to it, we changed the name for a good reason.

Looking around the room I saw we were the last to arrive, though that is somewhat understandable since we're the only ones that actually had to travel more than a few kilometres, since the Belgian monarch was already visiting her youngest sister that lives in London, the Systems Alliance representatives called this meeting in the first place and most of the remaining Belgian military and civilian high command was visiting Britain to look into having thirty of the new Hunter class corvettes the British had developed built for them.

All others, such as the Pope, the commanding officer of the Papal Armed forces, the French President and minister of Defence, the German Chancellor, President and Generalinspekteur (Inspector General of the Bundeswher or in other words overall commander of the German military) were here by hologram.

I still do not understand why the Germans and French kept insisting that element zero Gear should be given a greater chance in the navy, though their argument makes a small amount of sense in the form that the ships were so much cheaper to produce then our own Terran technology heavy dependant designs.

However we could simply never match the sheer manpower advantage our human enemies have over us, so we should instead be focussing on building things that can take down so many of them that in the end it wouldn't matter just how much of a numerical advantage our opponents have, we would still win the battles because any enemy group with a less than three to one numerical advantage flees on sight.

Ok, shouldn't be thinking about that now, not as our delegation walks to our assigned seats to the left of the British, with the Belgians being on their right, with then the French, then the Germans, the members of the Vatican and then finally the Systems Alliance, whom were seated directly to our left. What seemed to be the leading systems alliance officer stood up, and started the meeting.

 _''I am glad you have all answered our call for a meeting between us. As you all might already know, an alien force has attacked two of our patrols, with the second one winning the battle with said force. What you may not know yet is that we lost contact with said fleet within a few hours afterwards, moments after they sent a message of an incoming enemy flotilla.''_

After looking around, I could conclude that the only person in the room that was actually surprised at this, was the French president. The man seems to have noticed the same thing and began panicking slightly, until his defence minister whispered something to him, which seemed to calm him down.

Ok, one good thing, at least everybody in this room kept up their spy networks unlike the Americans and the Chinese. Those now depended on the new element for literally nearly everything in their government and military, including some things were element zero is actually inferior to their previous systems in many ways. Sure those V.I's of theirs were much cheaper to build and use them rather than using humans, synthetic A.I's or even organic A.I's as the main part of your cyber defence.

In theory the small number of actual A.I. they have to lead the V.I's should be enough to allow them to match much larger numbers of synthetic or even organic A.I. however the simple fact was that when overstressed with work some of it would, just like humans, start becoming of a lower quality then the A.I. is actually capable of.

Which means that their defences while certainly strong enough to hold against any frontal attack or full on take-over we could possibly try, which is a feat in and of itself, they are simply completely incapable of stopping any of our infiltration or light information gathering missions. Meanwhile our own defences are manned by a combination of synthetic A.I., organic A.I. and humans. Wait why do I keep going off in thought towards things not related to this?

The officer, seeing that everyone knew what she was talking about, continued _''We feared an immediate attack upon Shanxi, but for some reason or the other the enemy didn't go through the gate to perform a large scale attack. We found out a few hours ago that at least part of the reason for not yet pressing the attack was them sending in what seemed to be a special forces or espionage squad to gather information and take out the Colony's shield generator.''_

While saying this she started up the hologram projector on the table and pulled forth 2 three dimensional images of what seemed to be different members of the same alien species, walking on 2 feet, with one of them being blue and the other closer to green.

 _''As far as we've found out, these are some of our attackers. We have neither found out what they are called, nor have we learned of a way to communicate with them in their language. Early reports did find that most of their gear seems to be Element Zero based technology. And before somebody asks if these are the protheans, they aren't, their body structure is too different._

 _Some of the data on prothean biology left behind in their seemingly abandoned mars outpost confirms that. Also the technology is too low level for any possible revival of the Prothean Empire after being reduced heavily in their technology level due to some sort of civil war, considering they would by this point have long since retaken control of this region.''_

Wait the technology isn't better then what we found on mars? _''You said the ships and the gear they use are for the most part worse than the Prothean gear and data the Americans and Chinese found on Mars? So that means that while the average Terran fleet is at a disadvantage against them in element zero gear we'll have an advantage in energy weaponry and the defence against energy weapons? Especially our blast reduction shields and the quality of our armour?''_

 _''Yes, while their element zero technology is more advanced than ours, its only 'more advanced' in the term that we would at this rate independently reach the same level sometime in the next thirty years or so, instead of something that would take thousands of years to achieve._

 _Meanwhile all our other advantages will make it so that even the element zero reliant versions will overall be more capable than their own ships. Do keep in mind though they will be able to produce much larger numbers of ships for the same costs as even the cheapest variants we can produce.''_

That is not what I expected _''One last question if it is no problem?''_ She nods, causing me to continue _''According to our scientists we would be reaching a certain plateau in the growth of our element zero technology within a few decade where we will stay until something drastic happens, are these species already at that plateau or still moving towards it, possibly even already near finding a way to move past it?''_ _  
_

 _''As far as we can tell they are already on the plateau but haven't yet found a way to move past it in any shape or form.''_

I nodded _''That is good to know. Also, how long out is the QRF that you are sending?''_

 _''The quick reaction fleet is on its way, but due to delaying by the Americans and the fact that we have to hide our movement from satellites and space stations under American and Chinese control it will only arrive in 5 days instead of within the next 48 hours from their station ten lightyears away from Shanxi.''_

After looking at the non-Systems alliance delegations with them looking at each other for a moment then nodding, I sighed and decided we needed to upfront with this. _''Mr. Rutte, would you please explain Guardian Protocol strategies to those in the room not informed of it?''  
_

3rd person POV

.

The man named Jakob Rutte stood up, and changed the image of the holographic table to a list of what seemed to be documents, and selected one of them. ''These documents contain what is known to all high ranking military and civilian personnel of European Union as Guardian Protocol.

This protocol was officially created in June 2140, after continued heavy aggression towards us from China with neither the United American States nor most other countries not already allied to us speaking or acting out against it but our own defence of colonies against Chinese raiders and our attempts to enact vengeance on these people being portrayed as a danger to international peace by both China and the USA.

This protocol has been updated time and time again to ensure we have all possible tactics and individual countermeasures to Mass Effect weaponry and gear in general and sometimes specifically those used by the American and Chinese forces. Though a relatively large amount of these plans will be rendered useless by the fact that our current enemies most likely won't have the same issues as the Chinese do nor the American ability to underestimate any opponent no matter their strength or capabilities, I do admit.

The strategies and countermeasures aimed against Mass Effect oriented forces in general should be useful during this war, especially since it seems that they are even worse in how they armour ships and seemingly even buy into that idiotic 'as long as you fire may more projectiles then your opponent the actual damage a single one of those projectiles can do doesn't matter' strategy. Considering that while very efficient against shields, it's an extremely ineffective thing to use against actual armour this will give us a significant advantage.''

The room was engulfed in a stunned silence, with the people from the Systems Alliance to look around the room for support only to realize their own group were the only ones that hadn't known about it yet. The others were all looking on in either grim silence or nodding their ascent to this.

After that moment of stunned silence those that represented the Systems Alliance started yelling ''Why the hell are you idiots doing this, are you trying to cause a war?!'' or ''What! Why weren't we informed about this!'' and ''That damn president was right for once, you idiots are really intending to take over the planet through war and deception!'' and lastly ''We should have seen this coming after what you did to the Russians back in 2020''.

With the exception of admiral Kastanie Drescher. ''Ok, nice and all but how is this really that surprising, tensions have been rising ever since the Americans and Chinese tried to force the world to follow them through whether they would or wouldn't give access to military level Mass Effect technology. And when this failed in some cases they tried to bully those remaining countries in submission by creating as many economic problems for them as possible.''

She then turned towards Rutte and asked ''And what exactly are those plans? We can talk all about what was wrong about how you went about keeping this a secret later, right now we need any way to fight back against these Xeno's that we can get our hands on otherwise the people of Shanxi and most likely also some of the less well defended colonies nearby will be doomed.''

.

Kastanie Drescher POV

.

He nodded and pulled up a file that showed a very strange skirmish between what seemed to be a first generation British Dread class light cruiser and 3 Mao class frigates.

What was strange about the fight was that the outdated Cruiser was actually winning with relative ease, which became even more obvious when one of the frigates was mission killed within 20 seconds after the recording started by a shot of the Cruisers main gun, the second breaking in half less than a half a minute after that due to the Dread class simply ramming it out of the way, with the final dying when the due to the frigate taking a direct hit from the cruisers main canon to what seemed to be the ships engineering section.

After the fight ended Mr. Rutte paused the hologram, while saying ''This is the incident on which we based the early plans for any confrontation with Element Zero using groups, with no distinction if this would be a human nation or an alien race. What you might not have known about this incident is the fact that we later found out that these pirates were hired by the Chinese government with only sending these three after the cruiser as a way to showcase how 'outdated' Earth created energy tech would be in comparison with everything they learned from the ruins of the Protheans.

What they hadn't thought about yet at the time was the simple fact that frigates relying on Mass Effect are mainly meant for so called 'knife fighting' range, both anti-fighter and anti-torpedo screening and lastly torpedo delivery. The reason why this is a problem for them is simple, both A: energy weaponry is more dangerous the closer the fighting is, and B: The ship they fought is a light cruiser that fires shots that are close up the same strength as a mass effect light dreadnought's main canon, but with a lower firing rate so that if they ever come to face with an American light dreadnought and miss their first shot, they are pretty much doomed.

Usually, frigates could just stay out of its range without problems and have bigger escort ships take care of them, but because the Chinese government was so in love with the idea of making us look like outdated primitives, they gave us all the advantages in that fight and payed for it since after gaining the data stored in the frigates we were prepared for a number of their other plans that happened in the following period.

Because of this, one of our main tactics to take down Element Zero reliant ships, is to somehow make it a battle in knife fighting range, where the main canons of their larger ships will have less of an effect and a lower firing rate out of fear of hitting allies, while our own weapons cause higher amounts of damage. Though this should already be known since it is also in the very manual of our tactics to the ships and crews we give to the Systems Alliance Navy.

In this war said advantage should be multiplied by the fact that as the Admiral just revealed to us, our opponents do not have the same energy impact reducing factor to their shields that their Terran Mass Effect counterparts have, which coupled with their ships not being armoured will make anything smaller than a light dreadnought equivalent a single hit kill for our own cruisers. However sadly enough this will mean that in exchange for that their ships will be a lot more manoeuvrable and probably also have faster FTL then most of our fleets do.

To counteract this we will have to once again fall back on getting close enough to force them to keep engaging us, making them unable to just dodge shots aimed at them. On top of this with the stronger, better armour and much heavier weight similar sized ships from our side and their side have, we can just ram them if they get too close for main guns to be used, or hold our own against multiple ships of theirs at once just by using our broadsides.''

While a very basic strategy for such a large and apparently secretive plan, it is also a good base for a solid defence and attack plan, and will also reduce the chance of either side hitting planets by accident. There probably is a lot more, so let's get answers about more of this. This is probably the best option we have.

''This is a good starting point for a strategy to counter this opponent, but I assume you have a lot more? Can you explain some of the other plans that have been devised, and do you have something that our own Element Zero reliant ships can exploit in combat against other factions that depend on it?''

''I will, but can you first tell us what numbers both quick reaction fleet you have on the way towards Shanxi has and what the exact number of ships under the third fleets command is?'' I thought for a moment to get the exact numbers. ''The quick reaction fleet consist mainly of 32 frigates, 24 light cruisers, 6 heavy cruisers, 2 carriers and 2 light dreadnoughts, however…''

And with this I looked at the French and German representatives ''we were hoping some of the ships you have patrolling near the system would join ours to add to that size.'' The two groups had a minute of discussion, then the Germans turned towards me ''We are willing to lend 5 of the 12 wolf packs operating near the Shanxi system join your fleet at the Relay to it.'' After which the French President spoke up ''And we will add another 4 wolf packs to join your fleet.''

Let's do the math for a moment, both of these nations use the 5 frigate one light cruiser type wolf pack with the frigates mainly using Mass Effect while the cruisers at the very least have an DEW main gun, so that would be 45 frigates equal to my own ones in everything except FTL speed and 9 light cruisers with the firepower and armour of my heavy cruisers but the shields only slightly better than a frigate joining the fleet. ''Ok so that would bring our total number up to 77 frigates, 33 light cruisers, 6 heavy cruisers, 2 carriers and 2 dreadnoughts, so a total of 122 ships.

To answer your earlier question, the 3rd fleet consists of 159 frigates, 53 cruisers, 40 of those light cruisers the remaining 13 heavy cruisers, 4 light carriers, 3 light dreadnoughts and a heavy dreadnought as the flagship. Everything cruiser weight and above is either American or Chinese, while 22 of the frigates are Russian, with the Flagship being the American dreadnought Eagle's Flight. It would leave from Earth in a week after all repairs on the four carriers are finished and start heading towards Shanxi.

The reason why the whole group would be so slow in getting there even after repairs are finished is once again because of the carriers. They are all of the Yuhan design, and thus are dealing with heavy quality control issues to their engines which means that they can only travel at slightly less than half the speed that they are supposed to be able to.''

...

Planet: Citadel Station, Location: Council Meeting Room, Year: 2157 C.E. Time: Roughly at the same time as the meeting of the Systems Alliance and other factions on Earth

...

Councillor Tevos POV

…

''Ok, I have both good and bad news.'' began Councillor Sparatus ''The good news is that the Fifth and Sixth patrol fleets have been put at our disposal and will join any fleet we assemble to put a stop to Desolas Arterius, while Desolas himself has been put on the Hierarchies wanted list and as such is considered a traitor which if they learn about it in time will cause most if not all of the Hierarchy troops with him to turn against him.

The bad news is that we miscalculated how many troops Desolas had with him, he apparently also recruited the entirety of the nearby Eclipse chapter and gained another 8000 organic soldiers, numerous smaller transport ships, 12 repurposed cargo freighters, 10 older Asari frigates, one cruiser, and 8000 synthetic troops from it.

After this the nearby Asari republic of Minbara was contacted by him, they believed his reasoning thinking that we had given at least tacit approval and sent him a force of eight freighters and some 4000 infantry units.

This means that his total ground forces compose of 35000 Turian Hierarchy soldiers, at least 8000 Asari and Salarian mercenaries, 8000 Synthetic support troops and 4000 Minbara Republican Guard units. Meanwhile his ships are made up of a combination of most of the 34th Turian defence fleet, the numbers from that being 40 frigates, 30 cruisers and a single dreadnought.

Add in two still full or mostly full QRF fleets of 32 frigates and 8 cruisers each and one QRF fleet that is at least halfway dead with most if not all of its cruisers killed in action, though we are unsure of how many frigates survived. On top of this they have another 10 frigates and 1 cruiser as actual combat ships from a mercenary organisation and then some 26 transport freighters of varying kinds and a few dozen smaller transports as their logistical element.''

Damn it, while we already knew about most of that it's still very frustrating for them to get even more re-enforcements. Him having 55000 ground units alone already at his command, the chances of them actually believing this is just the action of a single high ranked officer going rouge is dropping fast.

Though there is at least some good news on that front with the Turian fleets, two are more than I feared they would send, if less than I had hoped for. ''The Asari Republics have agreed to put a bounty of 50 million credits on the capture of Desolas Arterius. The Destiny Ascension is being prepared to be used in this campaign, along with 2 other Asari dreadnoughts and whatever ships we can scramble together from the Citadel Defence Fleets without endangering the station.

The current number is 100 in total, if given a week time we could rise it to 400 without endangering the station too much in the absence of the Destiny Ascension, but with the support of the Hierarchy fleets we shouldn't need any more than 300 or so to force Desolas to stand down even if his troops keep following him after the campaign begins.'' And sadly enough it will also have to function as a warning to this new species about our power, that we can bring 2 fleets of such size to their borders within a few weeks of each-other while still holding most of our ships back to defend our territory.

.

Councillor Sparatus POV

.

After Tevos finished speaking the Salarian imp spoke up ''I have gathered whatever intelligence the STG and I could on this species, both from the information that Desolas got from one of their ships, the recordings of the battle and the recording of the interrogation performed against one of the captured survivors of their fleet.''

He seemed to become very nervous, but pulled up a hologram... oh ok now I understand why he was so nervous. This is pretty much a mix between Asari and Quarians back when they didn't require suits to survive.

''The species calls themselves 'Human' as far as we know, can range in height from 150 centimetres to the height of the average Krogan, till the tip of the hump included, and is bi-gendered. They seem to not yet have fully united, but if true, then this struggle might according to our psychologists very well be what makes them even more dangerous, since they had a good reason to actually create large fleets to defend themselves from each other, and now that we are intruding upon the situation we would cause those groups to unite to take us out.

From what we can put together, even though they have only been exploring Mass Effect technology for 30 years at the very most, their military is already pretty much at the same level as the Hanar, Elcor and Batarian ones are technology wise, however unlike with those three races we have no idea at all what they specialized in, they might even have Krogan level abilities to soak up damage and regenerate, any combat situation is to be approached with as much caution as possible.

It is of the upmost importance that once Desolas is taken out, we try to keep them friendly to us, they are only the third race ever met by this council since its founding while said race already had both achieved and to a degree mastered space flight. We literally have no contingency plans for the scenario of a war with this kind of faction outside of possibly heavily outdated ones that handle how we should respond to another race that is almost exactly like the Ranchi being discovered.''

While refreshing that the Salarian is willing to admit to the fact that he has no true contingencies in place, it is also very worrying. Especially since one of those three times such a race was met it where the Ranchi, who would have defeated this council in war if it hadn't been for the Krogan.

And this time around we don't have a race of overly large warriors with regenerative abilities to uplift to do the fighting for us if these humans decide to strike back with that same amount of strength, outside of the Yagh, and I would sooner die then uplift the Yagh, both of the other councillors also know my stance on said idea.

Because that would cause an attack from them at Citadel Space later on that makes the Krogan Rebellions seem like a bar fight in comparison. We would eventually win against the Humans to be sure even without uplifting anyone, but we might lose dozens of planets and millions if not billions of people in the process. And while if we do try the uplifting idea we would win with ease now, but lose four or five times that amount of planets and population a century or two in the future.

...

Ok, so a few things. First yes, due to me learning alot about some of the specific characters that weren't present that much in the original games themselves, whom I only knew about through fanfiction and a few mentions by characters in-game with not much of an actual explanation given, I made some mistakes with my early plans for the Arterius brothers.

I will rectify this now and say, that while Desolas will be a madman and racist(or specieist however you want to call it), he will be a competent ground force commander who has earned his rank at least partially because of experience in combat situations. The council, if anyone is going to complain about them actually having some form of common sense/intelligence like a lot of people seem to do at fictions that depict them as capable leaders.

Thing is, they are actually somewhat good leaders. However, they are very conservative leaders who are used to a status quo with relatively little change happening in centuries and looking more at threats from a political point of view and how it will affect their own species individually rather than seeing things from a military point of view and about the entire council space.

This causes them to be well suited and relatively good at ruling a semi-peaceful society and not very well prepared for a war with any group anywhere near the level of power they themselves possess. They are not at all prepared for a war with semi-immortal space ships that want to harvest the Galaxy, and thus since it has never happened before, they don't actually take the threat seriously. 

I apologize once again for this coming out so late, I have had a number of problems at work and in my social life that took precedent over this, but here it is. The next chapter will contain part one of a rough time-line and a load of information about the factions at play during and before the first contact war. Please leave comments, also tell me what I'm doing wrong so I can improve it for the next chapters.


	8. ME avenger timeline part 1

Chapter: Time line part 1

 **AN: The part until the next is Bold sentence is an authors note, and though it is useful to understand the chapter it isn't strictly necessary, so you can skip it if you'd like though I'd advise you not to.**

 **.**

Ok so I said in the last chapter this chapter will contain a timeline up until where we are in the story, so during first contact. I heavily underestimated just how large such a time-line would be if it goes into any detail at all about the backgrounds of things relevant to the story. So I'm splitting it into two parts: one till 22 September 2044 CE/AC, and another that starts on 23 September 2044 and lasts up until the start of the first contact war.  
CE(common Era) and AC(After Christ) are pretty much the same thing just because ME has this whole 'we're not going to touch on the topic of religion with humanity anywhere' thing they changed it. I'll use CE because that is the most likely to be used during interactions with another species when you're not trying to convert them to a religion.  
Also, I will likely have to rewrite chapter 7 a lot since I just read it back and realised that I wrote certain things in the POV of a person that I meant to have as part of either an uninformed persons POV or 3rd person, and keeping it like this will ruin the plot somewhat so yeah I'll also be working on that.

The citadel council remains roughly the same as in canon from their start until first contact with humanity, with mainly the human part, Quarian history and the part with the Protheans changing. This will of course have some effect on the Citadel Council and its wars, however because of inherent arrogance of one of the species (you all know whom I'm referring to…) it will be a lot less noticeable then it would be in a regular society until 2157 CE.  
For the remainder I'm mostly expanding upon things seen in regular time-lines so a gigantic war that cost billions of lives isn't summed up in: ''The Geth gain sentience, Quarians become afraid and try to take them down, this fails and Quarians are dead, Council are dicks so Quarians wander through the void.''  
Which is pretty much how most time-lines seem to sum up every pretty much everything that happens in Citadel space except for the Krogan Rebellions and the First contact war: keep it to less than 3 sentences and mention only the bare bones.

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Now I need to talk about something else a bit. When I post casualty counts of armies in specific battles (such as a number of those in the Indian Civil War), they will contain the casualties among all types of vehicles, troops and other such things, even if there are no casualties, as long as those troops were part of that army during the battle.  
For example, in a battle where one side has both tanks and IFV's (Infantry Fighting Vehicles, such as Armoured Personnel Carriers and Recon vehicles) and the other only has IFV's, and then only IFV's on both sides take casualties the report will look like this.  
Side A: 0 tanks, 4 IFV's destroyed, 20 soldiers dead, 8 soldiers injured, 3 IFV's lightly damaged.  
Side B: 12 IFV's destroyed, 70 soldiers dead, 26 injured but captured by the opponent.

In this situation Side A would also be the attacking group, since I post those as the upper one, while the defending group has everything noted down below them. I hope this makes sense at least on some level, if not please post a review about it.  
 **.**

 **And the Authors Note is over, onto the chapter**

Timeline for AU Mass Effect:

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48450 BCE

The most powerful organic race currently alive in this galaxy, the Protheans, decide to both literally and figuratively play Gods by splicing genetics of all so called 'primitive' races together to create a highly unstable serum, and then put this into the DNA of some Asari on their Homeworld of Thessia, forever changing Asari biology.

While the Asari are changed heavily physically, the effect isn't anywhere near to what the Protheans wanted, and as such they perform a second experiment on top of it: Is it possible to create an entire species of biotic soldiers by performing an Element Zero saturation on the planet they live on?

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48430 BCE

So far the second experiment seemed to be working as was hoped for, causing no more experiments sanctioned by the Prothean Empire to happen, because of their fear that any more changes might damage the capabilities of what the Emperor sees as his future slave soldiers.

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48420 BCE

As another side experiment, one of the Protheans inserts some of his DNA into the body of a young Asari child, just to see what would happen. The effects of this, and especially the many tragedies this single action would cause, would forever remain unknown to the Protheans.

.

48410 BCE  
The Prothean Empire has finally won their centuries long war with the Synthetic race that called themselves 'Metacon'. While celebrated without end, the lower level of alertness caused by this final victory will later be seen as the main reason why the Reaper forces were able to take down the Citadel station's defending fleet as easily as they did.

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48400 BCE

The Reapers first start their invasion of the Prothean Empire, by activating the Mass Relay that ends in the Citadel, with the battle for it devastating the overall leadership of both the Protheans and most of their vassal races. At this time the Reapers also use their control of the relay system to turn most of them off to stop Protheans from travelling between systems to re-enforce each-other in a timely manner. They make the mistake however that they do not understand how Prothean FTL communication works, and as such this attack warns all organic races in the galaxy of what is happening.

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48360 BCE

While the Reapers enjoyed a number of devastating early victories, they are now being ground down in close to a stalemate, since while they hold an extremely large advantage over the organic races in space, their ground forces are little more than cannon fodder to their enemies, causing them to need to send multiple Reapers of at the least destroyer level down to the ground with the troops to give them a good chance at victory.

This, in combination with the fact that the Protheans are the most advanced, well trained and well-organised opponents both in space and on the ground that they have faced in close 2 million years, while they are advancing and winning planets, their progress becomes slower each year and at great costs to their ground forces, large losses among their starfighters/drones and heavy damage to themselves, the repairs of which slow down the take-over of other systems even more.

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48350 BCE.

At great costs the Protheans and their subordinate races have managed to slow the reaper invasion down to little more than a snail's pace, and while they are still losing, they can stretch this for at the very least centuries, possibly even millennia. While they have no way of knowing this, their opponents, the ones they have started calling the Reapers, are starting to gain a form of twisted respect for the Protheans by this point, and are planning to make this race the template of multiple new Reapers and making the surviving indoctrinated Protheans into their Elite/most capable ground forces and also to have them form the base of a new Reaper Capital ship type.

This twisted respect also causes them to see past the arrogance they've gained from the relatively quick and easy victories in the 40 or so cycles before this, and instead of only producing 1 Dreadnought Reaper and 5 or 6 Destroyer Reapers like they had done for most of those cycles, they plan on making 8 of the former, and at least 50 of the latter though they know that even then this won't make up for the losses that they have suffered in space by this point in time, let alone the losses they suffered on the ground.

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48340 BCE

By this point in time, the Protheans have learned enough about the Mass Relays to re-activate the de-activated ones in the territory they still control and start the creation of a smaller one that leads directly towards the Citadel.

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48300 BCE

The Reapers are now advancing somewhat faster again, because of the sheer losses the Protheans suffered and their retaking command of the Relay system. However, the research team in Illos determines that going to the Citadel right now is useless since they would just be obliterated by the Reaper capital ships surrounding the station. They are put in Cryo Pods and will be woken up by the V.I after either the Prothean Empire has lost and the reapers have retreated, or when the fighting will get heavy enough that there will be too few enemies on the other side of the Miniature Relay for the opponent to take the team down.

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48265 BCE

The Reapers finish production of the first 20 destroyers, some created from captured and dead Protheans, most of these made from other, smaller species of this cycle, with another 31 destroyers and 8 Dreadnought class Reapers on their way. Unlike in previous cycles, the Reapers now also start converting enemy dead into their unwilling cannon fodder for in atmosphere forces while still on the battlefield, because of how dangerously low the amount of troops that remained from previous cycles is running. The demoralising factor of their own friends and families rising up from the dead to attack them causes the Reaper advance against the Protheans to speed up once again.

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48245 BCE

In their most dire hour, the Protheans managed to create a particle-beam rifle, which has the great advantage that it both passes through opposing Element Zero based shields with ease, and it also doesn't ever need to be reloaded or fed supplies in any other way outside of repairs done if it is damaged during combat. They also learned quickly afterwards how to create starfighter and tank compatible/sized versions of this rifle, finally giving their ground forces a weapon that has an advantage over the Reaper Destroyers when these enter atmosphere to serve as heavily armoured and shielded artillery platforms.

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48225 BCE

To better defend themselves against these new weapons of the Protheans, for the first time in dozens of cycles, the overall design of an entire Reaper ship class is changed heavily, with the Destroyers now all getting the same energy attack diminishing shields that the Dreadnought Reapers have, so that they will have less losses in ships sent to be ground support artillery while also making them more useful in knife fighting range GARDIAN duels in space.

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48220 BCE yi

Now truly realizing that they are losing and will almost certainly lose the entire war, the Prothean Empire begins retreating most personnel from research outposts near primitive species that still haven't left their home-worlds, hoping that this will have the Reapers leave them alone. While doing this the buildings oft hide Cryo Chambers that can hold up to 1000 Protheans, with the intent to use these to hide their people until the Reapers are gone, then have either the V.I. or if that fails, a scouting party of a primitive species, open up the chambers and release the Protheans.

They also leave 3 female members of their species behind on the Asari home world of Thessia, to serve as religious figures and leaders for the newly sentient species to guide them into becoming the leading species of the next cycle. This later fails due to their warnings and knowledge being either hidden or lost through time, while many begin picturing the Goddess Athame and her two assistants as Asari in looks, instead of the foreign Prothean ones.

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48200 BCE

The Reapers now unleash all gathered and created ships based off Protheans and the other species of this cycle upon them, to test the ships efficiency. The tests go well, with the 51 Destroyer Reapers and 8 Dreadnought Reapers taking out the 1 dreadnought, 16 cruisers and 28 frigates defending the system without too much trouble and only losing 3 destroyers and a large number of drone fighter/interceptors to the opposing force. This was both due to them using Prothean tactics against opponents that had prepared for Reaper tactics, and because of their numerical and technological advantages over the Prothean defending force.

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48140 BCE

While studying the remains of a species that existed roughly fifty thousand years before them, the Protheans manage to find the plans of a supposed anti-reaper weapon, that if fully realized and undamaged, will target Reaper-code only, and as such ignore every other being, organic or synthetic. It can still be used if damaged, however then it is a lot less precise, and instead of only targeting Reapers it would work as a EMP for anything that is not fully organic and more advanced than for example a steam engine, including all relays and the Citadel itself.

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48100 BCE

While the Protheans held out for 3 full centuries, defeated a number in the low trillions of the Reaper's ground forces from previous cycles and took down the largest amount of reaper ships in millions of years, they have now all but lost the war, with only 1 system still visibly fighting back. This system is led by forces from the planet that would in the next cycle be called Eden Prime.

The Protheans have gathered whatever ships remained from their navy, which while still in the hundreds is not anywhere near enough to face the tens of thousands of Reaper ships getting ready to take them out, with millions of ground forces readying themselves for a last stand, that was also hoped to work as a cover-up so that a group of close to a million survivors in an underground Cryo bunker, would remain hidden.

The plan is that they would start rebuilding and assisting currently still primitive races in becoming strong enough that the Reapers would be defeated in the next cycle, in case their first plan, a 'Crucible' that might be able to take out the Reapers, fails.

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48099 BCE

While they held on with all their strength, fought tooth and nail and took down pretty much all of what remained of the Reaper ground troops from before this cycle and a large number of the Huskified Protheans, the Protheans have finally lost the fight. Their Crucible super weapon they intended to use was sabotaged because some partially indoctrinated Protheans thought it could be adjusted to control the Reapers instead of destroying them. In reality it just destroys the devices ability to function. The hiding of the close to a million strong group went wrong because of an extremely recently indoctrinated Prothean learning of it after seeing a number of others enter the bunker and not go back out.  
He informs the Reapers and they send him and some other Proto-Collectors (huskified Protheans, but with some of the cybernetic additions later added to every Huskified Prothean not used in the creation of new Reapers to create Collectors) into the facility while most of the Cryo pods are already activated.

They destroy tens of thousands of pods until in a last ditch effort the V.I. guarding the facility sets off a load of bombs to try to take them out. It works, but also at the cost of both most of the power generators and its personal ability to wake people up from Cryosleep. This causes it to focus on sustaining the leader of the group, while also sending a message towards whatever Beacons are still active.

It becomes corrupted quickly, but reads: ''If any being comes across this and understands, this is Prothean V.I. kdoiewfed I am here by sending the coordinates of this and another potential facility. All personnel in both of the facilities will most likely be in Cryosleep, and in at least one of them, possibly both of them, they cannot be woken up without outside interference. The locations are kdoiewfed and kdoiewfed . Beware the Reapers and prepare for their coming (insert the vision gained in game 1 on Eden Prime).'' A big problem that the heavily damaged/injured V.I. could not remember in this state was that only beings with either Prothean DNA or Prothean mindset/beings with the Prothean language installed in their head could actually access the first part of the vision and see the second part of it clearly, instead of the first one not being visible at all and only seeing some disjointed images of the second one which is what will happen to any unchanged member of the next cycles species.

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48070 BCE

The V.I in the facility on Illos wakes up whatever personnel managed to survive the long time they have been in cryo pods, with the war having gone on for much longer than expected. Because of this, only the 12 best scientists in the group, that were prioritised above all others and as such got more energy to their pods, and 4 mechanics, have survived the experience. Saddened by the knowledge that they would never be able to rebuild the Prothean race, and not knowing about the other contingency plans in place because of how early they went into cryo sleep, they decide that since they will die out anyways, they might as well give the races of the next cycle a fighting chance. They activate the relay, all 16 scientists and 3 of the mechanics going to the other side.

Meanwhile, the 1 mechanic that remains behind is given the task to reprogram the V.I. in such a way that it will from now on prioritize three things above all else, its own survival, to keep any sentient indoctrinated by Reapers as far away from the miniature relay as possible. And lastly, to if the facility is ever found by non-indoctrinated sentient beings, assist them in any way it can to prepare them for their own war against the Reapers.

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48069 BCE

After months of trying to get it right, the team finally manages to re-program the keepers, whom will never be able to open the Citadel's Relay to where most of the Reapers reside in between their 'cycles' of their own power again, nor will the Reapers ever again be able to take remote control of them to do their dirty-work in taking out the Citadel's defences. The only way the Relay command can be undone and even then, only this specific command can be undone, is if an organic types in a specific code in the central tower of the Citadel, while said organic has the same properties that allow somebody to properly understand a beacon. However they are now starved, and have scavenged and eaten what little food there was left on the Citadel. They die within days afterwards, with the hope that they have given the next cycle a chance to be able to fight the Reapers on a much more equal ground than they themselves were forced to do.

End of the Prothean era.

Council founding era:

(Mostly the same as in canon, and even then most of the changes that are there would spoil certain parts/plot points in the story if I mention them in this list, though I do expand on the explanations provided by canon.)

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13,000 BCE

The Turians of Palaven begin to develop civilization around this time.

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6000 BCE

Seeking to escape the imminent explosion of their sun, an unknown alien race constructs an AI-managed starship equipped with supercomputers containing a virtual world, into which some one billion of the aliens transfer their consciousnesses in a last ditch attempt to have their species survive.  
Because of their technological level the ship doesn't have a FTL, but instead uses regular engines to go at 70% of the speed of light while the ship is made to be able to survive multiple millennia without needing much in the way of repairs. The ship begins a journey throughout the galaxy which lasts for the next 8,000 years. Less then three months after they start the journey their sun explodes, just a week before the second ship of its type would have been ready.

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1900 BCE

Tuchanka, the Krogan homeworld, enters the nuclear age. In a global conflict, weapons of mass destruction are released, triggering a nuclear winter. In the resulting devastation, Krogan society devolves into a collection of warring clans. Before this, the Krogan Civilization was a relatively prosperous one, with near complete peace within all nations themselves while the most prestigious positions and revered positions in society were for the female members that of religious leader, for the males the position of being an architect, and for both the military was the second most prestigious career.

However a large extremist group somehow managed to take control of one of the nuclear launch silos, causing a MAD scenario to activate, in which all nuclear weapons on the planet launched themselves at any potential threat, creating the earlier mentioned nuclear winter and killing off 93% of the planets population.

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1800 BCE

A supernova propels the Mu Relay, the only point of access to the remote Pangea Expanse, out of position. Concealed somewhere in the dense nebula formed by the supernova, the relay's position is effectively lost for centuries. The relay itself is found by the Ranchi during the proxy war they are forced into by the Reapers against the Citadel Council, however after their defeat no sentient knows where it is until shortly before the Reapers start their harvest of the Galaxy again.

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580 BCE

Because of the amount of Eezo that was on their planet, their species wide ability to manipulate Element Zero, and clues left behind by the Protheans specifically for this purpose, the Asari learn how to use Element Zero/Eezo with some efficiency only very shortly after entering what for most other species time line would have been the so called gunpowder age.

This has caused the idea to spread among the Asari that all forms of technology other then Mass Effect can never truly reach the height of Eezo reliant ones, which will cause them to get in trouble with new races that do not use this technology anywhere near as much later on. It will also scares them away from finding out alternative non-Mass Effect solutions to problems caused by using Mass Effect devices for certain things.

After developing faster than light (FTL) space-faring capabilities based upon Prothean technology, the Asari begin to explore the mass relay network, and eventually discover the large Citadel space station at a hub of many mass relays.

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520 BCE

The Salarians discover the Citadel and after some caution and espionage, they open diplomatic relations with the Asari.

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Early Council Era 500 BCE to 1 CE

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500 BCE

The Citadel Council is formed. The Asari and Salarians together colonize the Citadel and establish it as a centre of the galactic community, led by the Council. This year is also known as 0 GS, the beginning of the Galactic Standard (GS) timeline.

This meeting also leads to the founding of the Citadel Defence Force and the Citadel Defence Reservist Force, or the CDF and the CDRF, both with a Navy and Army branch and different groupings and classes in each of these branches.

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498 BCE

As a gesture of openness with their new Asari allies, the Salarian Union opens the records of the League Of One. Under threat, the League responds by assassinating every member of the Union's inner cabinet; Special Task Group operatives then hunt down and eliminate the League.

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400 BCE

First contact is made with the Volus. Eventually, the Citadel Council commissions the Volus to draw up the Unified Banking Act, which establishes a standard galactic currency known as the credit and links all galactic economies.

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400 BCE

The Turian Hierarchy discovers element zero in a nearby moon after finding the old Prothean research outpost situated there.

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380 BCE

The Turian Unification War occurs. The increasingly isolated and xenophobic colonies on the frontiers of Turian space go to war with each other. After years of fighting, the Turian Hierarchy sweeps in and pacifies the remaining factions. Animosity between Turian colonies continues for decades afterwards.

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370 BCE

The Council grants the Volus the honour of being the first non-Council species with an embassy at the Citadel, rather than a Council seat.

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250 BCE

First contact with the Batarians takes place, which marks the start of constant low scale conflict between forces of the Citadel Council and the Batarian Hegemony.

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200 BCE

The Asari discover the Elcor home system and help the Elcor locate and activate their nearest Mass Relay. "Within one Elcor lifetime" they establish a regular trade route to the Citadel and are granted an embassy. Because of their large size and physical abilities, a relatively large number of Elcor join the Citadels Defence Reservist Force, which will be called to arms in case of Galactic Scale warfare.

This isn't too well thought of in mainstream Elcor culture, where peaceful discussion is oft seen as the way to solve problems, not the application of violence.

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150 BCE

The Batarian Hegemony gets awarded an embassy at the Citadel, more because of the Council getting tired of the amount of their time the Hegemony representative takes up complaining about the unfairness of it all rather than any actual service given by the Batarians.

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120 BCE

First contact is made with the Quarians, however due to the fact that it is a fleet of Batarian Hegemony employed slavers making first contact a war breaks out between the two groups. The fighting turns in favour of the Quarians soon, with them having much better maintained ships and better trained naval personnel then the Batarians do. Their cyber-warfare is also of a much higher quality. Within a few weeks the Batarian fleets sent into the region are all defeated with minimum losses on the Quarian side, and while the Quarians are preparing a counter-attack the Asari Republics step in to try to negotiate peace.

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119 BCE

After a several months long armistice the Citadel Council finally manages to negotiate peace between the Quarians and Batarians, with the Quarians finally agreeing not because they are ready to forgive the unprovoked Batarian attack on their space, but more because they do not want to end up in a war with all the other species that were part of the Citadel. As part of the treaty the Quarian Confederacy gets an embassy on the Citadel.

Due to the skill the Quarian soldiers have shown in their battles with the Batarian Hegemony, with their mechanics, heavy infantry and armour divisions especially showing much promise, the Citadel Defence Reservist Force almost immediately lobbies for recruitment offices on the Quarian Homeworld. Many young and out of luck Quarians join, quickly becoming the second largest group in it after the Elcor.

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110 BCE

First contact with the Hanar is made, with the species quickly being integrated in the Citadel society and given an Embassy, for the devotion they share with the Asari over the Protheans.

Council Era - War and Rebellion (1 CE - 900 CE)

1 CE

The Rachni, a species of highly intelligent hive-minded insects, are discovered when a Citadel expedition opens a dormant mass relay leading to their star systems. The Rachni prove to be hostile and begin a war with the rest of the galaxy. Negotiation with the Rachni Queens is impossible because they cannot be contacted in their underground nests on the toxic Rachni worlds.  
The CDF, CDRF and national militaries of all member races are called upon to join the fight against the Rachni. The Batarian Hegemony on a governmental level refuses, though volunteers of young lower class Batarians stream in to join the fighting, fearing that if the Council is beaten Batarian space, and as such their homes and families, will be the next target.

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5 CE

On the ground, the Salarians provide the intelligence operatives and saboteurs, the Asari provide the light infantry, a large number of the medical personnel and biotic support, while the Quarians and Elcor provide most of the heavy infantry and armoured units with the Volus providing the remaining non-combatant units and a large amount of the in atmosphere air support, the remainder of which is provided by a mix of Quarians, Batarians and Salarians. In space most of the vessels currently in the fight are either Asari or Quarian with Volus and Batarian ships joining in to defend shipping lanes and to give more firepower to the ground forces, while Salarian ships serve as scouts mainly, while both Salarian ships and Batarian privateers work at disrupting Ranchi supply lines whenever possible.

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160 CE

The Rachni Wars continue. The Salarians make first contact with and uplift the now primitive Krogan, manipulating them into acting as disposable pawns and meat shields for the Citadel Council forces. The Krogan prove able to survive the harsh environments of the Rachni worlds and pursue the Rachni into their nests, systematically eradicating queens and eggs.

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290 CE

The Ranchi forces outside of their home system have been wiped out by this point, with the Krogan still heading the charge as shock-troops when on planets while the Quarians provide most of the ships with the Asari delivering the flag ships and space artillery support with their new dreadnought fleet.

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300 CE

The Rachni are declared extinct. In gratitude for their aid during the Rachni Wars, the Council rewards the Krogan a new home-world. Free of the harsh environment of Tuchanka, the Krogan population explodes.

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310 CE

The Krogan begin to expand exponentially, colonizing many new worlds.

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410 CE

Growing concerns about their expansion lead to the founding of the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch of the Citadel.

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693 CE

Beelo Gurji, a Salarian operative, is appointed the first Spectre by the Citadel Council.

Krogan Rebellions

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700 CE

Krogan warlords leverage veterans of the Rachni Wars to annex territory from other races in Citadel Space. Eventually the Council demands withdrawal from the Asari colony of Lusia, but the Krogan refuse. A pre-emptive strike is made on Krogan infrastructures by the Spectres. The Krogan Rebellions begin.

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701 CE

Much like early on during the war against Rachni, it are the member species that have to fight as the main heavy ground forces, with the Asari and Salarians mainly performing spec ops and light infantry duties. This to the great annoyance of these member species, since the Asari alone already outnumber most of them put together in total population numbers.

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725 CE

The Citadel Council makes first contact with the Turian Hierarchy around this time and persuades them to aid in the war. After the Krogan respond to the initial Turian offensive by devastating Turian colonies with weapons of mass destruction, the Turians vow to stop the Krogan from ever becoming a threat again.

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745 CE

The Vol Protectorate is accepted as a client state of the Turian Hierarchy, with positive treaties and agreements for both in the eyes of the Citadel Council. The Volus themselves and also both the Elcor and the Quarian governments object to this, but with the war going on they do not have the ability to push it since they need the Hierarchies assistance badly.

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750 CE

The Turians decide to use the Genophage, a Salarian created biological weapon that causes large amount of stillbirths if used on Krogan, and bombard multiple Krogan held planets including Tuchanka with it. This decision is made after they came to the realisation that the Krogan would never give up as long as they could replenish their population fast enough to replace all losses in manpower overtime with ease.

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775 CE

Due to both the morale effect of the genophage and the lack of re-enforcements to replace dead troops, the Krogan are finally being driven back instead of always being on the offensive.

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799 CE

The Krogan Rebellions are over, while there will still be some small scale fighting in the following decades, Krogan clans on Tuchanka have for the most part surrendered out of fear of being driven into extinction. Shortly after this the Krogan devolve into heavy infighting for resources, land and fertile population members on their home-world.

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800 CE

The Turians fill the military and peacekeeping niche left by the decimated Krogan. The Citadel Conventions are drawn up in the wake of the conflict, in an attempt to prevent future conflicts of this scale.

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801 CE  
The total losses of the Krogan rebellions are counted up, and end up being 5,8 billion, this number including every death on both sides of the war caused either directly or indirectly by said war during the war. However the aftereffects will continue killing the Krogan people for the next centuries not only by causing many stillbirths among the Krogan, but also by many of the members of the Krogan species committing suicide because of the amount of their own children that die in those circumstances.

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Council Era - Expansion (900 CE - 2157 CE)

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830 CE

The Turians are granted a seat on the Citadel Council in recognition for their service in the Krogan Rebellions. The fact that none of the other member species that supplied forces for this war have gotten any commendations outside of some small financial concessions for it is seen by many of those factions as an insult, including but not limited to the Quarian Confederation, Courts of Dekuuna (Elcor), the Batarian Hegemony (though this government is more angry because of the fact of being ignored by the Citadel Council then because they actually lost all that much in the fighting) and the Vol Protectorate (Volus).  
The last of whom are also still enraged that they went from the third most important species in the Citadel to being the subordinate species of what they see as 'Imperialistic warmongers '.

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1500 CE

Extensive and unchecked industrial expansion on the Drell home-world Rakhana begins taking a significant toll on the planet's environment.

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1600 CE

The first sightings of the Collectors are reported in the Terminus Systems. In Citadel space, the claims are dismissed as unsubstantiated rumours and tall tales.

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The Morning War

1894 CE

The Geth, machines created by the Quarians as a source of cheap labour, start becoming self-aware. At first the Quarian Confederacy doesn't see much wrong with this, and outside of some small scale protests by both a number of the newly self-aware Geth and some Quarians to give them more rights it is for the most part a peaceful process, though the politicians aren't sure what to do about it and send a message to the Citadel Council asking for advice on the situation after one of the Geth Units asks 'Does this unit have a soul?', and though the question has been asked before, this time around the owner of the Unit panics instead of going into either a debate with the Unit or simply ignoring it like the other Quarians before her did.  
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The Citadel Council on the other hand becomes enraged over this, and decides to take the old Prothean approach to this problem: ''Anything that isn't organic doesn't have a right to self-determination and if it disagrees it isn't anything more than a disobedient tool.'' They inform the Confederation that if they do not start shutting down the Geth, the Council will force them to do so by parking multiple Turian fleets in the orbit of Rannoch and blowing up any building that has even the slightest chance of housing Geth platforms.

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1895 CE

Fearing what a war with the Council would cost their people, and feeling that they wouldn't be able to win even with their newly sentient allies, the Confederacy leadership decides to accept the Council order with a heavy heart. This ends up in a disaster, causing the Geth to revolt after some of their programs notice what is happening, with a small number of Quarian citizens siding with the Geth while most side with the Confederacy. The citizens siding with the Geth end up captured or dead early on in the war for the most part, causing the Geth to feel something they have never truly felt before: a deep desire for revenge. Due to their inexperience with such strong emotions, especially as enhanced as they are due to the Geth Collective's hive-mind they are swept away by it and are near completely overtaken by bloodthirst.

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1897 CE

The Confederacy is losing the war badly, with them having lost Rannoch and most of their colonies by this point after systematically being thrown off the planets by enraged Geth units. After their latest plea to the Citadel Council for support once again goes unanswered, they decide the best way to save their people is to gather what ships they have left and load all remaining Quarian civilians on them, while some of their soldiers and both those ships too damaged to make the journey and some not FTL capable smaller ships manned by volunteers remain behind to slow down the Geth forces as much as possible.

The plan works, but once the fleet manages to get out of the Perseus Veil and get close to the Citadel, the Council revokes their right to an embassy on the Citadel and throws them out. This in their eyes is a perfect punishment for creating the Geth and then failing to destroy the newly born synthetic species.

They also forbid any of the governments part of the Citadel Council to keep alive a stream of resources towards the Quarian Migrant Fleet. This enrages and shocks not only the Quarians but also to a lesser extent the Volus and Elcor, who now more than ever realise that if the council ever considers a problem they have dangerous to confront, they will be abandoned without any hesitation.

The only government truly happy with this outcome is the Batarian Hegemony, who have in their mind now gained the upper hand in the centuries long rivalry and cold war between them and the Quarian Confederation. Their slaver raids against the Quarian Migrant Fleet however fail miserably, since they don't seem to take in account that most of the remaining Quarian sailors and soldiers are experienced combatants that fought much worse threats then some badly trained overconfident raiders.

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1898 CE

Against Council orders, the Courts of Dekuuna (Elcor) and the Vol Protectorate (Volus) governments send some credits and raw resources to the newly created Quarian Migrant fleet, but with the close watch of the Council this oft means they cannot give more then what is on government level small change and enough resources to repair a small part of the Fleet and setting up companies to give government paid shuttle rides back to the Fleet for stranded Quarians. The Quarians however are thankful for any assistance they get, and as such remain on friendly terms with the only governments that are doing their best to support them in their time of need. At this point 180 million Quarians are still alive in the known galaxy.

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1900 CE  
An index done by the Geth shows that close to 3,9 billion enemy Quarians and 150 million Elcor soldiers and mercenaries hired by Volus credits died during the newly dubbed 'Morning War', while on their own side 4 billion programs and 200 million Quarians that sided with them also died. The current Geth population is 40 billion programs. (The average Geth physical body needs to house 150 to 200 programs to be capable of intelligent action even when it is near other Geth. Fully independent intelligent action only starts at 400. The main reason behind the low Geth casualties is that their programs in most cases can flee their bodies back to central hubs before the bodies are destroyed)  
By this point in time they also have long since calmed down from their initial want for revenge, and are now for the most part horrified by how badly it affected them, causing the Geth to isolate themselves from the remainder of known space, but a large number of programs swear to themselves that if the Quarians as a species are ever threatened again, they will step in and defend them no matter what it takes.

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1910 CE

Sadly enough over the years, the same feeling of compassion towards the Quarians doesn't stay with most of the population of Council Space, with the exceptions of some of the Elcor and strangely enough most Krogan. The Krogan consider the Quarians and Elcor worthy opponents and also respect them for their often outspoken disagreement with the Citadel Council about whether or not the genophage should continue being refined and renewed on the Krogan, instead of only being a 1 time thing. Lastly they also see something of themselves in the Quarians: a once proud and respected race, now seen as nothing but barbaric beasts by the remainder of the galaxy.  
The current Quarian population is 150 million, most of the deaths being caused by attacks from Citadel population on members of the flotilla out to gather resources.

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1921 CE

The Geth begin construction of a mega-structure designed to house and simultaneously run every Geth program in existence. Completion of the mega-structure, which would allow the Geth to maximize their collective processing capacity, is the long-term goal of Geth civilization.

They also discover how to create efficient plasma weaponry, however due to not having any internal wars or combat with Citadel forces, they have little reason to improve much upon it initially.

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Era of discovery

April 12 1961 CE

Yuri Gagarin aboard the Vostok 1 becomes the first human to travel in space. Humanity becomes a space-faring race.

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July 20 1969 CE

Apollo 11 lands on Luna, Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to walk on Luna, and the first human to walk on an astronomical object other than Earth.

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1980 CE

Aria T'Loak assumes control of Omega after defeating the space station's previous warlord in single combat. She mockingly bestows the title "Patriarch" on the broken Krogan, and uses him as a reminder to her enemies of her power.

The Quarian population is at this point down to 100 million, while the total Council population has currently reached 102 billion.

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1985 - 1991 CE

Giotto - First ESA deep space mission; first ESA mission to intercept an asteroid (Halley & Grigg-Skjellerup)

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1990  
Launch of the Hubble telescope

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1991 CE

What would later be called the first ''Modern international cold war'' on Earth ends, with the Soviets being the ones to lose the war. Despite the numerous times where it was a close call, it eventually didn't devolve into a full on nuclear total war, with only proxy wars becoming hot zones for direct combat between the two ideologies. Though admittedly the number of these proxy wars and their casualty counts were very high.

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1997 CE  
Sojourner touches down at Ares Vallis becoming the first rover to explore Mars. During its three months of operation, the rover captures more than 550 images of the Red Planet.  
Huygens, First ESA mission to Titan; a Saturn moon

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2000 CE

The Hanar and Drell have first contact after a Hanar missionary vessel finds a drifted off derelict satellite and decides to follow its navigational records back to the Drell home-world. Shortly after hearing their story and seeing the state of the Drell home-world, the leader of the vessel decides to contact his superiors in the Illuminated Primacy and pleads for an evacuation force to save as many Drell as can be safely housed in Hanar territory. The leader of the Primacy, seeing this as her chance to act as they think the Protheans assisted and uplifted all species, decides to send all ships that can safely transport Drell to bring them to Kahje and Belan, their two colony worlds most suited for non-Hanar life. In the end close to 8000000 Drell are evacuated, but many more remain on their home-world, either to fight over whatever is left or to try to build it back up.  
Later expeditions will add another 2 million to the number of Drell living away from their homeworld, this time around mostly being orphaned children found all around the planet that wouldn't have had much of a future if they weren't taken in by the Hanar.

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2003 CE  
Mars Express, the first ESA mission to Mars and SMART-1, the first ESA mission to Luna happen in this year.

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2004 CE  
Rosetta, the first ESA mission to orbit an asteroid (67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko) happens in this year.

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2005 CE

The first very basic computer that can think for itself with a moving physical body is created by humanity. This will later be considered the first 'synthetic dumb' A.I.

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2006 CE  
Venus Express, first ESA mission to Venus and Huygens, the first successful landing on an outer Solar System world (Titan) happen during this year.

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2008 CE

Tensions start rising around the world with North Korea threatening to fire off nukes at any and all opponents, while Russia starts taking land from several of their neighbours whenever these neighbours have an internal conflict. The international community is angry about this but cannot do much without potentially starting an international nuclear war.

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2012 CE

Several countries start getting progress in their research into practical pulse laser weaponry. Though there is a large amount of competition, the researchers in Great-Britain, the Netherlands and the USA are getting the best results so far.

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2015 CE

Both the USA as well as a British and Dutch coalition bring out pulse laser weaponry, however the version from the USA turns out to be a glass canon. While possessing significantly more firepower than the one created in Europe, it has cooling issues due to a small flaw in the power delivery system and it cannot operate in any weather colder than 0 degrees Celsius or hotter than 35 degrees Celsius. Finally if somebody were to hit the device with even a single bullet from any fire-arm stronger than the average 9mm pistol it would stop functioning properly and have a 50/50 chance of either melting down or causing a self-destruct explosion if somebody attempted to use it afterwards.

The European design on the other hand only has half of its American counterparts firepower, but is very robust, has a significantly shorter cool-down period and can be used in any weather, no matter if its freezing at -12 degrees Celsius or a sweltering desert at 40 degrees Celsius. Though the first one isn't recommended since extreme colds can cause a loss of up to 10% in both range and firepower, and the second one isn't recommended because of a 15% longer cool-down period than usual. While the British got power systems and laser generators for the guns themselves to work, the Dutch scientists were the ones that designed much better versions of the targeting systems, cooling systems and outer shell for the devices.

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2016 CE

After a civilian passenger aircraft flying above Ukraine is shot down by pro-Russian rebels, an international incident surrounding both the disaster and the attempted cover-up of it by the Russian government cause anti-Russian feelings in the west to solidify, especially in the Netherlands, since a large number of the passengers where Dutch citizens.

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2017 20th of January

Donald Trump is inaugurated as president, starting a dark time for the formerly great federation the USA. He withdraws his country from a multitude of international agreements that benefit everyone world-wide, stops state funded research into cleaner and/or better energy sources, opens a large number of coal reliant factories and tries to force any press that speaks out against him to be shut down while also becoming known as 'the most fact-challenged American President in the History of modern fact checking' with 2373 wrong or misleading claims in his official statements during the first year of his reign as president.  
He also tries, but fails to repeal several laws put into place by his predecessor Barack Obama, the reason for failure being the senate having enough of his lies and unproven claims especially after checking the laws meant to replace the former laws, which would not only cost the USA more money but also lower the quality of health-care countrywide. His claim that he will be the first president with an American space navy will later on also turn out to be a lie due to him souring relations between himself and most of the nations and groups world-wide that he would need to actually be able to create a reliable combat capable space ship.

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2017 4th of June CE

The first non-prototype versions of the 1st generation Pulse Laser Canons are introduced by the Dutch and British and sold to their European allies at production costs prizes. The Americans are offered, but president Trump orders the military to not accept it. The progress of installing them as the main canon of all frigates flying Dutch, British, Belgian and German flags is started. Most other countries in Europe remain behind for the moment and decide to mainly use them as anti-air and anti-ballistic missile defences for their most important cities.

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2017 CE  
Great Britain decides after a very close vote during a referendum to leave the European Union, however instead of the economic growth they expected immediately after making the decision, they instead lose a lot of income right off the bat because of companies that relied upon the free trade between all Union members pulling assets out of the country.  
International trade deals made by the Union on behalf of all its members no longer being valid lowers the income from export to parts of the world outside of Europe by 12%, while the import costs rise by slightly more than 14%. A large part of the population regrets voting for leaving the European Union within a few short months after the process has been started.

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2018 CE  
The Dutch and British naval fleets have replaced all of the main guns of their frigates and destroyers with the new energy guns, that would later be designated as the 1st Generation Pulse Lasers, currently they are just known as Laser Canons.  
Due to this change being overshadowed by other international news, a lot of leaders from other countries that would otherwise take notice of this and take this change seriously, ignore it for the most part due to their attention being focused either inward or towards the Middle East, the Ukraine or president Trumps behaviour in the USA.  
At the same time Great Britain and The Netherlands are through arming their frigate and destroyer class vessels with the Pulse Lasers, the Germans and Belgians rely on Dutch mechanics to do the work on their ships for them.  
Continued higher levels of participation within the EU and the effect of Great Britain leaving the EU causes the Dutch Admiral Herbert Broekman to be chosen as the new commanding officer of the EUNF, or European Union Naval Forces.

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2019 CE  
After pressure has been rising between his country and the European Union for years Putin, the leader of Russia, decides he needs make some of the smaller members of the EU 'realize their place in the world' by forcing them to back down from the conflict. He decides to first target the Netherlands, while ideally targeting the Danes and Belgians after that operation has been successful.  
His anger with these specific countries is that they found Russian spies within their borders and openly shamed Russia in the international scene by revealing them to the world, making them much less useful for future operations.  
Due to being blinded by the success most his operations have had in recent years, he doesn't have many good backup plans that deal with if the operations fails due to being foiled by actions of the other nation, instead all backup plans are to deal with the clean-up if one of his own agents either turns traitor or is not competent enough to perform their part in the plan which would cause it to be exposed.  
At the same time, unknown to anyone except the presidents of other EU countries and the high level members of the Dutch Ministry of Defence, the Netherlands builds three new satellites and sends them into orbit, however these satellites aren't regular ones, they are one-shot Laser WMD's that can be used to either A: take down a group of nuclear missiles from orbit or option B: send a 7 kiloton WMD hit down on a target anywhere around the world at the speed of light.  
President Trump decides to leave the NATO, after calling all other members ''Useless leeches to us proud American people.''. Before proceeding to demolish the American government and throw the country into large scale civil unrest due to a six month long government shutdown because he wants the project of his wall getting built to start.  
Meanwhile the actual problems the people that voted him into power wanted him to solve have barely been addressed at all, with many of them having actually become worse ever since he became the president. He is eventually deposed, however the country won't be able to overcome the problems caused by his actions for another 13 years.

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2020 CE 1st of June

The more detailed plan devised by the KGB following Putin's idea is put into action after gaining the approval of Vladimir Putin. The plan involves the kidnapping of 350 tourists spread out over the world while having a third party mercenary group start an attack on the island of Curaçao. The target Curaçao was chosen since it experienced a natural disaster recently, and as such will have less defences ready to ward off the attack.  
While the first part of the plan actually goes as predicted for the most part, the second part doesn't because of inexperience amongst the mercenaries whom forgot to deploy modern anti-radar and anti-satellite technology. This caused them to be noticed close to 3 hours before they manage to reach Curaçao, and with all naval assets in the area being notified, the regional EUNF flotilla and Dutch law enforcement patrol ships manage to get to the Island before the mercenaries arrive. The end result of this is a naval battle that causes the entire mercenary fleet to be sunk and no more than 30 of the mercenary ground forces manage to get ashore, where that small number of mercenaries is dealt with by local law enforcement and Dutch military personnel with no casualties on the defending side and most of the mercenaries dead.  
However the fact that the fleet was noticed so early also has a disadvantage, because the focus on this lowers the chance of them noticing the pattern of hundreds of tourists being kidnapped, some in the middle of a street in broad daylight, most from more discreet locations but all within 6 hours.

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2020 CE 2nd of June  
The kidnapping reports from world wide stream in at the Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken (Ministry of external affairs) in the Netherlands, surprising everyone with what happened. All clues paint a very bad image: the KGB and almost certainly the highest levels of the Russian government are involved in this. Interrogation of any of the captured mercenaries gives them nothing but dead ends, with none of them actually knowing who they truly worked for outside of him being a Russian man that spoke nearly accent-less English.  
Fearing that this might mean a military confrontation with Russia, the current Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, decides that they need to prepare for the worst and tells all naval and orbital assets to prepare to be able to execute operation ''Breek de Beer'' (''Break the Bear'') at any moment, should it turn hostile.

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2020 6th of June CE  
An anonymous message from Russia is sent to the address of the Minister-President(Prime minister) with information regarding the case of the missing tourists and a contact number. After reading the message he becomes enraged at first, though he calms himself afterwards as determination to get his people back no matter what starts growing in him. He then makes a call to the Dutch Monarch that unknown to him, will change the history of mankind:  
 _''We hebben u nodig in een onderhandeling met Rusland over enkele problemen die ik liever niet over de telefoon vertel''(We need you in negotiations with Russia over a number of problems that I would rather not talk about over a phone call)  
''Ik zal er binnen 10 minuten zijn'' (I will be there within 10 minutes).  
_After they meet up at the work palace of the King in Den Haag (The Hague) Mark Rutte explains everything to him, and he agrees to call the commander in chief of the army after the King suggests it. After they all meet up, they decide that operation Breek de Beer will start the moment the Russian president refuses to peacefully surrender the civilians to them without concessions short of becoming a Russian puppet state.

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2020 8th of June CE  
Russia starts pulling back forces stationed abroad and quietly sends all of the kidnapped tourists back to the Netherlands. Their president also seems to have become a new, broken man and will not be re-elected into the seat of power again in the year after due to this. Because of these things happening, Russia suffers heavy loss of face in the international community and will not regain that for a long time to come.

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2021 CE  
Due to how useful they proved to be in the Battle for Curacao, many governments develop a love for the idea of a laser armed naval fleet, and start either more intensive research into the devices, or opt for diplomatic approaches of the EU to see if they are willing to sell some to them.  
After years of small to medium scale conflict happening all over the world, everything finally starts calming down, with new governments setting in place of more hostile or instable ones after most of these conflicts. This is not to say that the world is prefect, however the chance of a global nuclear war has decreased drastically in comparison to how high the chance was in the past two decades.  
The Dutch government buys a large share in the 'Lightyear One' company and places a large order for them in all land based government vehicles. The company is known for building electrical cars that are able to function fully on solar power. They also convince other EU members to perform the same action.  
(They have the maximum ability to drive 1000 kilometres before needing to fuel up, however because of the solar panel power system, even in the Netherlands this just means parking them outside for 9 hours in the summer or 18 hours in the winter, though if needed they can be fuelled up simply connecting them to an electrical network.)  
At the same time, they also build six new nuclear power plants and install solar panels on all major government facilities to supplant the rising price of fossil fuels, these projects are projected to lower the need to import fossil fuels by 75% within 3 years. Soon after seeing the success of these actions, other EU members follow in their footsteps.

2022 CE  
The once again increasing trade world-wide and newly available wealth in Europe has them restart old space programs that were left in the dust to deal with more immediate problems until now. Due to new innovations made by different companies in Europe in Solar and Nuclear engines, space worthy vessels can now be produced at a much lower cost then before, making it viable, even for smaller countries, to take part in it and provide both ships and crew members to international efforts.  
At the same type, due to an increasingly small amount of government funds needing to be spent on importing fossil fuels in most of the EU's member states, they race ahead of most of their competitors in this area, which is noticed by the other world powers. World powers such as the USA and China emulate them, though they feel insulted that they need to copy the example of an 'inferior' conglomerate of nation states.

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8th of November 2025 CE  
A research team in Japan has started on the process of creating an A.I. that is smarter than the current relatively 'dumb' A.I. programs available on the market.

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5th of December 2025  
The death of Queen Elizabeth the second shocks the world. Though it was clear she was getting very old, people still expected her to live on, with the mythos surrounding her making her seem immortal to many. While the position of British monarch was by the time she became Queen mostly ceremonial, she still had a great social and cultural impact on not only Great Britain and the remainder of the world, being the longest lasting British ruler.  
As her son has gotten dementia the previous year and thus wouldn't be able to handle his duties as a king very well, her grandson takes over instead, and starts a subtle campaign to make the idea of re-joining the EU more attractive then it currently is, considering right now 59% of the population supports it, but for it to work, they need 67% popular support.

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2nd of January 2026 CE  
The death of another giant shocks the world. Originally seen as a short term replacement, Pope Francis the first whom was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, managed to take the Catholic church out of its downward spiral of losing members and losing the faith of the general public that was happening when he became the leader. He did this by making the church go back to its roots somewhat, in having them become the religion of the poor that defends the weaker and repressed members of society.  
Following this mindset he made it a law for gay couples to be able to get married in a church, illegalise catholic versions of the 'Nashville' pact, cut out most of the corrupt higher tier members of the Catholic church and ensured that no matter what rank they have in the church, anyone suspected of crimes would have the legal capabilities of the country they performed said crimes in and that while the church will provide them with a lawyer, there will be no other legal assistance.  
Lastly he also enlarged the population of the Vatican and changed its governing laws so that instead of being a non-hereditary absolute monarchy its governing system to a non-hereditary constitutional monarchy with a democratically chosen leader for the civilian government. While the Pope would remain the head of state and head of the military, he would lose most other abilities that were given to him as part of the original position 'King' of the Vatican that a Pope would gain once they became the leader of the Catholic church.  
To quote him from one of his speeches: "I would like us to make noise, I would like those inside the dioceses to go out into the open; I want the Church to be in the streets; I want us to defend ourselves against all that is worldliness, comfort, being closed and turned within.''  
and from another ''I would rather have the Church bleed out in the streets, defending the weak and defenceless, living to the founding spirit of our religion and die out fulfilling this goal rather than slowly die unnoticed on top of an ivory tower.''  
The success of this was both seen and admired by many other religious groups world-wide, making them head more in that direction themselves too. It re-invigorated world-wide piety to religions, even causing numerical growth across the globe, though the percentages of religious and non-religious remain roughly the same world wide as the numerical increase doesn't fully match the global population growth.

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5th of June 2026 CE

Greece finds large deposits of gold, silver and iron on and near several of their smaller islands. This newfound material wealth is used to pay off a large part of their debt to the European Union, finally silencing most of the groups that wanted to throw them out.

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2027 CE  
Norway, Iceland, Ukraine and the Vatican all join the European Union during this year.

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2028 CE  
A small settlement is formed on the moon, which is now officially designated as 'Luna', governed directly by the UN department of Extra-Planetary affairs. It will quickly grow, while prototype solar powered artificial gravity machines heighten the gravity to near Earth Level gravity, with large underground agricultural complexes providing food. By the end of the first year of its existence, close to 9000 people from countries all around the world live there.

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2030 CE  
Great Britain joins the EU once again, however this time around the country will have stricter guide lines and a new agreement is formed that in case the country wants to leave the EU again they will need strong majority vote in parliament or a two thirds majority vote in a referendum, instead of the government being forced to go along with what was little more than an opinion poll among the population and treat it like an actual vote.

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2031 CE  
Turkey joins the EU.

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2032 CE  
The USA gives a demonstration of their new fully tested weapon: a move-able rail gun which functions as the main gun of a new class of battlecruiser. It becomes highly sought after by all countries that don't have a friendly relationship with the EU and gives a much needed boost to the countries economy after an economic crisis that kept worsening for close to 25 years.

2033 CE  
Upon realising that even with all the funds put into it space colonisation will not advance fast enough to prevent an international famine caused by the growth rate of the human population in time, it is decided by the EU to collectively start a project of terraforming deserts worldwide into actually useful land.  
While this is going on, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Ireland also start another project the Dutch have had a large amount of experience with for the past millennium: gaining land from the sea through poldering.

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2034 CE  
China discovers a way to produce plasma based weaponry, which while less powerful and slower than both railguns and laser weaponry, it has 1 massive advantage: Its extremely cheap to make and doesn't need much in the way of cooling systems, unlike laser weapons, and doesn't need anywhere near as expensive ammunition or maintenance as the Railgun weapons do.  
Also unlike both laser and railgun technology, it can be made small enough to be reliably used by non-mechanised infantry, though at this point it looses most of its advantages in comparison to gunpowder based fire-arms since the guns small enough to be used by infantry have a rate of fire only slightly higher then muskets. Meaning that while good as anti-vehicle weapons, they fare terribly in infantry against infantry battles.

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2035 CE  
After the initial success of the International settlement on Luna (now called 'New Hope'), new settlements are started by individual nations, though the EU through their space agency ESA decides to also form some shared ones under ESA control. Small scale conflict sometimes exists between these settlements, causing the UN department of Extra-Planetary affairs to get a large raise in funding to handle the diplomacy between the different settlements and regions.  
By the end of this year, there are roughly 8.9 billion humans, with 1.6 million of those living on Luna and everyone else on Earth. Plans are drawn up for both the permanent settlement of Mars and the terraforming of areas of the Red Planet.

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1st of June 2036  
After months of negotiating, with the EU assisting and working as a diplomat to soothe out differences, the African Union is reborn, though this time much more stable. Its founding members are Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Madagascar and South-Africa.

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15th of June 2036  
After being approached by the EU about the possibility of terraforming parts of the Sahara desert into farmable lands, the newly born African Union polls their populations about the idea, and with an overwhelmingly positive response they accept the proposal, agreeing to make it a shared investment.  
The end result of the negotiations after this is as follows, the African Union pays the local labour forces and other work crews, the European Union will pay the actual specialists and supply the equipment for not only the terraforming, but also all agricultural efforts in the region for 5 years after the conclusion of the project.  
All profits will be for the African Union, however in return they will become an ally of the European Union politically, sign a mutual defence pact and curtail illegal immigration towards European countries as much as they can, in the long term also accepting those who migrate back to the African Union from Europe.

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30th of June 2036  
The actual project starts, currently named 'Desert Paradise', it is expected to take between 15 and 20 years to fully realize it. After this period of time however, and with the promised farming techniques and equipment the European Union will bring in, the area is expected to be able to feed a 350% larger population then it currently has, which is saying something considering that the regions current population has to import close to half of their food and other agricultural products.

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1st of December 2036 CE  
After many failed attempts, the research into creating a true A.I. bears fruit, with the Japanese A.I. gaining sentience. The A.I., that doesn't show a preference to any gender yet at this point, has many discussions with the researchers, but is currently restricted to living in a single room, with no access to the internet or any technology other then its own body, which is rooted to the ground in-case it decides to fight its creators for one reason or the other.  
While all these precautions are taken, the AI is treated well by the scientists, who subconsciously have begun to see it as their 'child', while the AI sees them as its family. This type of A.I. will later be known as a 'Synthetic Smart A.I.'.

1st of June 2037 CE  
International scouting missions on Mars have shown a multitude of secluded and relatively easy to terraform spots, which has the UN call all countries worldwide together and gives each country the chance to choose spots, with the sizes of the claims being determined by a mix of how much the country of origin needs it, how capable they would be of actually reaching the spot and how well they would be able to make use of it. This event will later be considered the start of the Era of Colonisation.  
To prepare for possible problems caused by the predicted expansion into space, a vote is held to give the UN department of Extra-Planetary affairs permission and some funds to build/buy a small navy of space capable combat vessels, and hire both the crews for those vessels and the ground forces to take on planet-based problems on planets other then Earth.  
In the same convention, somehow renaming the planet Earth into something else comes up, as something that in the same language used for the word translates to 'dirt' might not be the best idea when potentially interacting with another species, and it is agreed that names can be sent in for the next year by every country that is a UN member state, with a vote being held 6 months after the suggestions are all in.

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1st of December 2037 CE  
Countries from all over the world have offered designs for combat capable space vehicles for the UN department of Extra-Planetary affairs, but four design series show the most promise, the Defender Series sent in by the EU collectively through their shared space agency ESA, the Xing Series designs sent in by the Chinese government, the Kalvari Series from India and the Armstrong Series from the USA.  
They are seen as useful for very different reasons, the EU designs are seen as such due to them having the best engines, the highest quality laser weaponry and somewhat better armour than most of the others. However the problem is, they are also very expensive to build in comparison to most other designs, especially the Chinese ones.  
The Chinese designs meanwhile have the highest level of cost-effectiveness and can transport much larger numbers of people and goods during missions then any of the others, while the Indian ships have the best armour however both are highly underpowered on the weapons front due to using plasma based main guns, while their engines are much less energy efficient then both the European and American designs.  
Lastly while the Armstrong series are the most powerful offensively they are for the most part glass canons and can relatively easily be taken down if the opponent knows the design well enough because of the armour being inefficient against laser weapons and a design flaw in the power delivery system that causes the engines to not be able to be used while firing the main gun.  
They are however the only design that effectively uses railguns as their main weapons, which causes them to have another offensive advantage against the other designs since most were built along the idea that railguns and other such weapons would be at best the secondary weapons of any ship, causing their armour to be geared towards defending against the effects of laser and plasma weaponry due to the extremely high speed and power of the first and the low production and maintenance costs of the second.  
Eventually its decided to go with the Defender Series designs for the majority of the actual warships, the remainder being the Armstrong series, while they will go with the Xing Series designs for troop transports, passenger ships and bulk goods transports. Scouting and exploration vessels will be divided between the Defender and the Xing series.  
During this discussion, the possibility of a hostile first contact comes up as an eventuality they have to prepare for, and that while the creation of more mobile defences such as ships should be restricted, the use of orbital defence platforms to defend both the home-world and all future human colonies is taken into consideration. It is agreed upon to return to this subject once the first actual ships have finished production, to give both the side for the idea and the side against the idea good arguments and an idea about the actual economic practicality of the devices.

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1st of May 2038 CE  
All suggestions for the planetary name change have been sent in and have been noted down. During this year Japan has decided to open up to the world about their creation of an A.I., and after some discussion and international fear it is decided to let the A.I. talk to the UN in person, however it will be restricted to a robot that has a very large storage capacity so that the A.I. can be comfortable, but also unknown to said A.I. a kill switch that can be immediately activated the moment it turns hostile, with the robot body also having no real cyberwarfare capabilities.  
This meeting will happen a week after the election for the new international name of the planet Earth on official UN documentation and in potential future contact with alien life forms.

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1st of July 2038 CE

To ensure that there is a recent index on which population numbers can be checked to keep vote manipulation through added fake votes of already dead or non-existent citizens as low as possible, the UN sends out inspectors specie wide to ensure the fairness of this index. The total human population of 9225060542, or slightly more than 9,225 billion people. 9,105 Billion of these people live on Earth while 120 million people live spread out over the moon and a number of space stations surrounding both the home-world, its moon and the new orbital shipyard.

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1st of November 2038 CE

While many ideas are brought up and discussed during the meeting, the three ideas that are the most widely supported are the names 'Terra' (Latin for 'The ground we stand upon'), المهد الذي ولدنا منه (Arabic for 'The cradle from which we were born') and 那些為勝利而生的人的家(Chinese for 'Home to those born for victory'). Though all three are regarded positively worldwide for the most part, the Latin and Arabic names are the most likely ones to actually be successful considering that while the thought of a victorious mankind pleases all national leaders, they are diplomatic enough to realize any alien they got into contact with would probably be deeply offended.  
Though a few of them do not care much about that, especially the Chinese representatives. Eventually the votes go 46% for Terra, 36% for المهد الذي ولدنا منه (Arabic) and 18% for 那些為勝利而生的人的家 (Chinese). With this the question of what to name the home-world is finished, however the future is still uncertain with the debate between UN delegates and the young AI comping up in the next week.

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8th of November 2038 CE  
On this day, the UN holds its meeting with the young synthetic A.I., who by this point has developed her own identity, considering herself female and changing her avatar to resemble a Japanese woman in her late teens. She also treats the scientists that worked on the project of creating her as her family members, calls them her aunts and uncles, with the head of the project being her father figure.  
The robot body has been changed to accommodate this relatively recent occurrence, and now has a series of projectors installed that will project the chosen appearance over the metal body. This will most likely also have the positive side effect of making both the general public and the people debating with the A.I. more at ease due to the somewhat familiar looks.  
During the meeting, which is televised all across the globe, the A.I. not only all questions peacefully which takes away many of the concerns the U.N. general assembly and the public at large had but also gives a rousing speech, winning over many to the cause of seeing her as an equal to a human.  
Shortly after the end of this speech, a vote is held on giving A.I's that are found to be sentient equal treatment to what the local law would give to humans. The law passes by 87% votes for and 13% against, and though the Russian government is part of the faction that votes against they don't use their veto for an unknown reason.

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24th of February 2039 CE  
The first human space based warship finishes construction, it is the new Defender series frigate, with 9 more of these, 1 Defender series cruiser, 3 Armstrong series frigates, 8 Xing series freighter class troop transports that will double as passenger transports for new colonies until nation-states have their own ships , 6 Xing series freighter class goods transports, 2 Defender series exploration corvettes and 2 Xing series exploration corvettes in production and scheduled to be finished sometime later that same year.  
This event restarts the discussion about Orbital Defence Platforms, or ODP's for short. The idea is approved of, however while nation states are allowed to build and own their personal space based mobile fleets, the stations will always be under the direct command of the UN Office of Extraplanetary Affairs. A design committee is created from several high ranked officers from the UN forces, though this time the contractors and designers are in service the UN personally instead of the member states.

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2nd of March 2039 CE  
While the project desert paradise is still a long way from being completed, the terraforming project to create more land where there is currently sea is well on its way towards completion and has given the EU 3% more land, however this land is all capable of supporting crops and with the advanced Dutch farming techniques it will be more efficient than all other similarly sized agricultural production areas worldwide.

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1st of June 2039 CE  
The first colonies on Mars are created, with the UN freighters transporting people and goods towards these new colonies, one of the first things done is stabilising the general temperature of Mars so that liquid water can exist on it without either boiling or icing over. After that the locations selected for colonisation get weather regulation devices and other terraforming tools to ensure they will eventually become self-sufficient.

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2040 CE

Nation states start producing their own space navies, during production of the European ships it is decided that they need a new non-pulse based weapon since said pulse laser weaponry has turned out to have a somewhat short range in space before losing a large amount of its power during an actual combat situation the new ships have had against a Xing series frigate that had been captured by pirates.  
To counter this flaw project 'Broadside' is started, owing its strange name to a bet between the scientists working on it. The contents of the bet were lost to time however. It is offered to refit the currently in production and already produced Defender designs free of charge once a solution has been found. Seeing as even with this flaw, the ships and their weapons are still heavily superior to all of the others, the UN Office of Extraplanetary Affairs accepts this offer without too much fuss.

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2041 CE  
During this year Zimbabwe, Ivory coast and Ethiopia join the African Union while Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia join the European union. The first prototypes for space capable fighter jets are made known to the public, after one of them gets filmed taking out an asteroid heading for the capital of Luna (the moon), New Hope.

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2042 CE  
Problems start brewing in both the northern parts of India and the country's extraplanetary colonies, with the friction between various political and social movements increasing severely. This unrest is partially caused by a combination the large scale corruption in the government becoming clearer with the day, which all groups blame one of the other groups for, but also partially by a growing shortage of both food and luxury products in the colonies on Luna and Mars.  
These shortages are caused by the government refusing to buy space-ships from other countries even though it is clear their own current fleet cannot handle the amount of goods that need to be transported to the colonies on a monthly basis.  
During this same year, the African Union as a whole votes to join NATO through both parliamentary votes in all their nation states and a Union wide forum. The forum gets approval with 80% of the votes for, 20% against. Meanwhile the parliamentary votes all also get voted positive, though in most cases with slightly more difficulty.

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2043 CE

During this year the first designs of the ODP platforms have their first prototypes made. The one actually brought into mainstream production, named the HADES Orbital Defence Platform, has both a spinal railgun that the station is built around intended to be used against large ships such as frigates and cruisers, and 4 second generation pulse lasers systems intended to serve as a defence against both asteroids and smaller ships, such as space capable fighter jets and corvettes.  
During this same year, the EUNF is transformed into NATO's overall naval organisation, with a meeting being held by the combined representatives of the EU and the AU to decide what name to give this new overall organisation that will be in command of the sea fleets and the Space Navies of the organisation. After a close vote it is renamed to the Union Fleet Command, or UFC for short.

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2nd of February 2044 CE  
The first prototypes of non-pulse laser canons are successfully created and tested by the researchers and mechanics working on the project 'Broadside'. After some more refining, the canons will replace the original main weapons of all current ships over the course of year, and automatically be integrated in the newly created ones.

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5th of March 2044 CE  
The current Indian government, to much scorn from both international groups and members of its own population, decides to push back the elections by 6 months, to in their own words 'stabilize the country', however considering that they are the main reason behind the destabilisation in the first place, this is seen through for what it is fairly easily: an attempt to keep in power for as long as possible.  
At this point the population of India, colonies included, is 1,4 Billion people.

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5th of June 2044 CE  
The previous unrest in India comes to a head during a four-way conflict between members of the SIP (Socialist India Party), members of the NIP(Nationalist India Party), members of the DIP (Democratic India Party) and law enforcement units. Close to a thousand people die during the incident, with thousands more getting injured though it is unclear who instigated the conflict or what the underlying reasons actually were that turned the public debate into a warzone.  
Investigations lead nowhere though hundreds of people do get arrested for being found guilty of being 'co-conspirators' by the government, and mainly serve to cause even more anger on all sides, since these were oft just random people the government disliked for one reason or another that had nothing or at most extremely little to do with the event.

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23th of August 2044 CE  
After several more incidents raising the death toll up to somewhere between 5000 and 5500 people, and raising the amount of injured to just above 12000, both the SIP and the NIP perform coups in their regions of influence, while both attempt to do the same in the capital, only to lose the effect of surprise shortly after the start of the attempt due to them keeping each-other busy long enough for forces loyal to the government to regroup and take them down harshly, causing the whole affair to devolve into a brutal civil war.

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24th of August 2044 CE

The news of the coups and the battles become known worldwide, and after an emergency UN meeting, 4 protected zones are established. One large protected zone in the uppermost part of the north on the border between China and India, manned by both Chinese and North-Korean troops, though mainly Chinese ones after most of the Korean troops desert to either China, Bangladesh or the United Federation of Oceania less than a month after being stationed there, simply out of desperation for actual food, sleeping bags and ammunition.  
(Due to North-Korea's logistical problems the supplies the troops are getting is only actually the bare minimum a force that is a third of the size of the North Korean detachment needs in a warzone. This is even more devastating for them then for a normal army simply because of the fact that most of them were already underfed).  
The second zone is set up along the East Coast of the country, being manned by the troops of the United Federation of Oceania, the main contributors for the land forces being Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand while the main naval contributors are Australia and Indonesia. The land forces are under the command of an Indonesia general, while the naval forces are under the command of the Australian admiral Daniel McArthur.  
The third zone is setup in the Southernmost part of the country and manned by NATO troops, the main contributors on land being Germany, France and Great Britain, while the main naval contributors are Great Britain and the Netherlands. The land forces are lead by the German general Hanz von Muller, while the Naval forces are the 2nd through 6th UFC fleets supported by support and supply ships of the 8th through 11th UFC support flotilla's. In overall command of these forces is the Dutch admiral Herbert Nollen.  
Lastly a task force from the UN as a whole sets up the largest safe zone on the western border of the country, stretching from the North-west border with Afghanistan down to the Sea. Most of its forces are from the USA, Russia and Mexico. The overall command of these forces, both on land and on the sea, is the UN general Johannes Marinus.

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30th of August 2044 CE  
When the NATO forces arrive in the zone they are supposed to control, they find that there are a large amount of refugees already there, both political and your everyday civilian, and that they are being defended not by government forces, but by the military arm of the DIP from NIP attacks, who see the many 'classless' people in the region in the same way that the Nazi's in WW2 saw the Jews, as a useful workforce that doesn't deserve to live in freedom, but needs to be enslaved for the betterment of society.  
In the past week this has already caused roughly 95000 civilian casualties, with another 20000 soldiers who deserted the regular military to side with the Democrats and militia troops dead while trying to defend both the locals and the refugees, while the previous attacks cost the NIP only some 9000 soldiers.  
The main reason behind the DIP losing so many troops in comparison to the NIP is relatively simple, the DIP is low on supplies, has little to no heavy vehicles or artillery and what they do have consists mostly of museum pieces, heavy trucks with guns attached to them, about two dozen helicopters and their pilots that followed the regional air-force commander when he joined the DIP side and maybe three-hundred IFV's from the local military garrison that by and large joined the DIP after their commander sided with them, and they had already lost a hundred of the last group when they were forced to fight tanks or be used as improvised anti-aircraft units.  
Their total manpower both regular military and poorly equipped militia's included, is down to slightly more than 70000 men by this point, with more of them being the poorly equipped militia's rather then the better equipped regulars by this point due to lost battles and forced retreats were the regulars often volunteered to fight rear-guard actions.  
They see the arrival of the NATO troops as a miracle, since they believed they would all die in the next determined NIP attack on their defensive line. Arrayed against them in the next attack wave will be according to what intel they managed to gather somewhere around 220000 soldiers, with a thousand or so tanks, more than 5500 IFV's, an air-force most likely quadruple the size of the DIP's own and hundreds of other vehicles including artillery, anti-tank units and anti-air units.  
After this is reported back to NATO high command, both the EU and AU leaders are enraged and decide to send a second force to support the first, consisting of nearly all of the remaining Belgian, French, British, Dutch and German mechanised divisions, artillery units, anti-air units, helicopter squadrons and tank divisions, a large number of Polish, Finnish, Spanish, Italian, South African, Algerian, Moroccan, Egyptian and Turkish infantry divisions, all still active paratrooper divisions available, the 7th and 8th UFC fleets, orbital coverage from the 1st UFC space fleet and last but not least all SAS, Foreign Legion and Green Barret units that can be spared without endangering their home countries.  
All units not sent are put into full awareness and preparations are made to be able to turn the economy to wartime settings if needed, while multiple reservist forces are called upon and plans are made to join the civil war on the side of the Democrats if they decide to actively partake in it instead of holding a defensive stance only.  
After what happened due to inaction in the second world war, the Balkan conflicts and the Rwandan massacre and the early parts of the Syrian civil war, they are not willing to get caught off guard due to violent responses again. The main idea is 'If these people only seem to want to make the world burn and only understand violence, then let them feel our wrath, and see if they are still willing or even able to fight afterwards'.

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2nd of September 2044 CE  
A new offensive by the NIP shatters on the defending forces of the NATO, while the DIP and militia troops are stationed out of the combat areas to form a second line of defence instead in case the first line fails and to prevent large scale flanking attempts from being successful. NIP air coverage is lost in the opening hour of the attack due to them underestimating the NATO anti-air and air-force capabilities.  
With NATO armoured and mechanised units absolutely destroying their NIP counterparts even in situations where the former are heavily outnumbered, with NATO air-forces taking out NIP artillery and anti-tank units while also giving information about both NIP anti-air units and NIP reserve infantry positions. Both are targeted by artillery fire.  
This forces these to move forward under heavy artillery fire where the diminished infantry units get into battles with their NATO counterparts in urban warfare, and though the NIP still outnumbers the NATO forces at this point due to their 2 to 1 numerical advantage at the start of the battle, this advantage doesn't matter much since they lose between 12 and 15 of their own for every single NATO casualty.  
Halfway through the third hour of the offensive NIP troops start surrendering an masse and by the start of the fourth hour 95% of all NIP troops are either dead, captured or retreating, with most falling in the first two categories. The last remaining enemies are flushed out over the next half an hour, while surrendering NIP troops are carted off to hastily erected prison camps and wounded from both sides are brought to medical facilities.  
NATO air forces chase the retreating army, however due to a brave rear-guard action from the remaining NIP vehicles and anti-air pieces, they are slowed down for a span of the next 4 hours, though all NIP rear-guard forces are destroyed by the end of this period of time.  
They were however successful and by the time the NATO air-force managed to finally take them out and pursue the infantry, the infantry had gotten far enough that most NATO helicopters had to refuel and while they were doing this the NIP infantry had managed to enter territory with an unknown number of enemy anti-air defences, causing further pursuit by the NATO air-force to be put to a halt.

Losses  
NIP: 980 tanks, 5200 IFV's, 350 artillery pieces, 120 anti-air units, 200 anti-tank units, 25 fighter jets, 80 helicopters, 151000 soldiers dead, 43000 soldiers captured by the enemy, 29000 soldiers with various degrees of injury that did manage to retreat back to NIP held ground. 20 damaged tanks and 400 damaged IFV's were captured by the enemy.  
No more than 15 damaged tanks, 170 damaged IFV's and 25 damaged anti-air units managed to retreat. These remaining vehicles were destroyed by NATO forces while trying to fight a rear-guard action to defend the retreating forces from pursuing NATO fighter jets and helicopters.

NATO: 65 tanks, 350 IFV's, 0 artillery pieces, 3 fighter jets, 0 anti-air units, 35 anti-tank units and 25 helicopters destroyed, 5800 soldiers dead, no soldiers captured by the enemy, 5000 soldiers with various degree of injury, a large number of whom will be combat effective again within a month with basic medical care. Another 40 tanks suffered major damages, 150 tanks suffered light damages, 110 IFV's suffered heavy damage and another 400 IFV's light damages. Of these vehicles 120 tanks and 350 IFV's would be combat ready again within the week.

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3rd of September 2044 CE  
Countries worldwide start getting news about the combat between the NATO and the NIP, with the overall reaction being shock. NATO had just not only proven that they weren't going to stay silent in this war, they had shown the world just what they were capable of if angered sufficiently enough.  
Then people saw the casualty reports and became even more shocked. The NIP had somewhat lower quality equipment and training yes, but a number of them still had Indian Military training, and having seized many government supply depots, which oft had modern tanks, helicopters and jets all armed with plasma and railgun gear. Meanwhile their infantry divisions were less well armed and armoured, but a most of them still had plasma anti-armour weapons and the regular weapons taken from army supply depots around the country.  
The plasma anti-armour weapons proved to be just about useless against the actual main battle tanks of the NATO, though they did a good amount of damage when used against enemy IFV's. The infantry meanwhile got slaughtered in any situation where they didn't have a significant numerical advantage over their NATO opponents.  
Meanwhile the NATO tank laser canons, both Pulse and the newer 'broadside' canon versions, absolutely wrecked the NIP vehicles, oft killing them in two or at most three hits, while NATO fighter jets danced around NIP targeting systems for anti-aircraft units with such easy it seemed as if they weren't even trying. NATO IFV's machine guns absolutely destroyed both their counterparts and enemy infantry, even allowing them to fight NIP tanks on near equal terms on the few occasions NATO didn't have their own tanks in the area to counter them.

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4th of September 2044  
The DIP starts up its own government, the Indian Republic, with parliamentary elections being held the next month in any region under their control. They style themselves after the multi-party democratic systems common in Europe, the NATO will supply training to the new nations military, while it's member states are now also sending hundreds of cargo freighters filled with humanitarian supplies, weapons and building materials to the region to assist in supporting the new nation.  
Their military is already in a much better state then before, with the militia's now finally having equal level gear to the NIP's forces, and also a number of IFV's and tanks that were captured during the battle against NIP. The supplies from NATO also ensure they have enough food and medical supplies for both themselves and the civilians they protect.

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5th of September 2044  
North Korea decries the NATO intervention in the conflict, no other countries do so openly for varying reasons, some agree with the NATO actions, some feel that the public outcry against themselves would be more trouble then its worth, some decide that this gives them the perfect reasoning to start interfering in the civil war themselves.  
Meanwhile the EU and AU member states collectively begin the transformation of their economies to wartime economies, hoping to prevent making the same mistake leaders in the first world war made of thinking their troops would be home within 3 months even though they were fighting enemies roughly their equal on some fronts.

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7th of September 2044  
The CCP starts supporting the SIP, sending food, ammunition, weapons, vehicles, and some of their own forces to both train and support them. When other countries inquire about this, the reply is simple; ''We are following the NATO example in supporting a government that is in our opinion a preferable option over the current one, that might actually be able to bring stability and peace to the region.''

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8th of September 2044  
The new support of the Chinese towards the SIP causes a reaction from some NIP units, which try to attack a Chinese convoy transporting these goods which they are now in desperate need of after forces from both the original government and SIP used the losses sustained by the NIP air-forces and armoured divisions during their attack against the NATO lines to charge forward while always having air force superiority, forcing the NIP to give up the initiative and driving them back further and further.  
China's reaction is to declare war on the NIP and commit 240000 of their own soldiers to an offensive campaign against them, quickly taking more land in the name of the SIP, and weakening the NIP even more. By this point, they have turned from the strongest faction in the civil war to the weakest faction in less than three weeks after said civil war officially began.

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10th of September 2044

The more than 600000 strong NATO re-enforcements arrive, making many countries worry about just what the NATO is planning to do. Skirmishes between the Republics military forces and NIP troops happen along the current border, with snipers from both sides attacking small enemy groups, which while not doing much numerically wise it does do a somewhat high amount of damage to morale of troops on both sides. The NIP see this as the prelude to an attack and start retreating their troops back further and set up large scale defensive works.

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12th of September 2044  
The Indian Republics best military forces, mostly consistent of former regulars from the Indian national army, supported by NATO mechanised divisions, armour divisions and aircraft squadrons begin a march North to free remaining nearby NIP territory, with in total 30000 Republic soldiers, 40 Republic tanks (most of them captured NIP vehicles), 1600 Republic IFV's (many of them former NATO vehicles and captured enemy vehicles), 18 Republic helicopters, 30000 NATO soldiers with 3230 IFV's, 800 NATO tanks and air support in the form of 30 helicopters and 40 fighter jets.  
They destroy and/or capture most of the NIP troops that are blocking their path on the first 60 kilometres of the planned 400 kilometre expansion among the entire line Northward to liberate multiple nearby cities where most of the refugees currently in the Republic fled from.  
On this same day, a combined Chinese and SIP attack on an important NIP base close to Delhi gets repelled, even though the combined Socialist forces were 41000 strong, while the defenders had only had 21000 troops.  
Even so, the defenders were some of the best that the NIP had, and for every single one of them that went down three or more of the socialist troops would die, with the survivors retreating after a gruelling 4 hour battle.

Losses battle in the South:  
NATO and Republic: 4 tanks, 35 IFV's, 5 helicopters, 0 fighter jets destroyed, 120 soldiers dead, 0 soldiers captured by the enemy, 100 heavily injured soldiers, 300 lightly injured soldiers, 5 tanks with light damages, 12 IFV's with heavy damages, 28 with light damages.  
NIP: 4 tanks, 40 IFV's, 2 helicopters, 20 anti-air pieces, 20 anti-tank units, 2000 soldiers, 1500 soldiers captured by the enemy, 200 injured soldiers that managed to retreat with 30 IFV's with light damage.

Losses battle in the North:  
CCP and SIP: 60 tanks, 480 IFV's, 6 fighter jets, 30 helicopters and 0 artillery pieces destroyed, 28000 soldiers dead, 200 soldiers captured by the enemy, 2500 soldiers heavily injured and 4000 soldiers lightly injured but both groups managed to retreat back to Socialist held territory. 20 tanks and 40 IFV's heavily damaged but captured by the enemy, 40 tanks,110 IFV's, 25 artillery pieces lightly damaged but managed to retreat to socialist held territory.

NIP: 15 tanks, 40 IFV's, 20 artillery pieces, 40 anti-air units and 140 anti-tank units destroyed, 9500 soldiers dead, 0 captured by the enemy, 4000 heavily injured that wouldn't be able to return to fighting condition for the remainder of the war, 3000 soldiers lightly injured. 3 tanks, 16 IFV's, 20 anti-tank units and 5 anti-air units heavily damaged, 12 IFV's lightly damaged.

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13th of September 2044  
After the relatively easy victory for NATO on the first day, the second day grows into something just shy of a nightmare, with them only advancing 10 kilometres before starting to encounter heavily entrenched enemy forces, slowing down the advance and causing them to have to call in air support multiple times.  
While this is happening they also meet significant amounts of opposing vehicles for the first time since what is now called the battle of Madurai (the first major battle between NATO and NIP forces). This causes artillery units to be called in and moving a number of them closer to the front then before, since no hard resistance was expected before this day began and thus no artillery support was expected to be needed.  
Due to the unexpected amount of resistance, the advance is stopped completely for the next 12 hours at 18 kilometres progress and 2 lines are formed for most of the day, with the stalemate only breaking after the NATO paratroopers drop behind the enemy line and manage to take out most of the enemy anti-air and artillery units, while the artillery manages to take out roughly half the enemy anti-tank gun crews.  
A tank charge with mechanised infantry support after this managed to break the enemy defensive line allowing the Republican infantry to sweep in and exploit the gap. After the NIP troops understand defeat is a certainty, they load as many injured as they can into all their remaining IFV's while all remaining non-injured infantry performs a breakout charge against the paratroopers and then stay behind to fight a rear-guard action to let the injured get away unimpeded.  
This victory however comes at a heavy cost to the NATO whom suffer their greatest losses till now while the Republic forces suffer an almost complete defeat of both their air-force and their armoured units, while also losing thousands of infantry troops.  
These are also the Republics first large scale losses since the NATO troops arrived. Due to these extremely high losses, more artillery re-enforcements and more mechanised infantry are called in for support, as well as more tanks to replace those lost, while all paratroopers not used in this battle start preparing for a combat drop.  
On this same day, the first and only major naval engagement between the NIP and the UFC, with the NIP losing in a gruelling 6 hours battle when all still working ships surrender to the UFC 1st and 2nd fleet. Later on it was said that pretty much the only good things that came from this battle for both NATO and the Republic were the bond of respect it created between the soldiers of both sides and the PR victory of two forces united liberating the area from the oppressive rule of the NIP at great cost.  
However this battle and the near impossible victory against Chinese assisted SIP troops in near Delhi also gave the NIP something to gather around: They, the only faction made up truly of forces from India only, fighting for India's ideals only and no-one else's, could make these invaders bleed and even beat them, no matter how outmanned or outgunned they were.  
A propaganda campaign centred around this idea gave them a large influx of new recruits and gave them the ability to fight on where before this it looked as if they would fall in less than a week.

Meanwhile the original government was being trampled underneath the boots of SIP armies now that these actually had proper gear, making more and more of those that would have joined them originally now join the NIP. Not only that, but due to just how the troops acted in the fight against the Republican and NATO forces, all NIP now have found a grim inspiration: No more surrender, fight to the bitter end, no matter how badly the situation goes.  
The loss of nearly their entire navy during the naval battle however took away their ability to resupply by sea in any way shape or form and also drastically weakened their ability to stop amphibious invasions of their territory, forcing them to stay mostly on the defensive even with their influx of new recruits.

Losses land:  
Republic and NATO: 160 tanks, 520 IFV's, 0 artillery pieces, 40 helicopters and 5 fighter jets destroyed, 9800 soldiers dead, 0 soldiers captured by the enemy, 4000 soldiers heavily injured, 5000 soldiers lightly injured. 90 tanks heavily damaged, 250 IFV's heavily damaged, 300 tanks lightly damaged, 350 IFV's lightly damaged.

NIP: 180 tanks, 240 IFV's, 100 artillery pieces, 90 anti-air units, 270 anti-tank units and 20 helicopters destroyed, 47500 soldiers dead, 0 soldiers captured by the enemy, 400 heavily injured and 100 lightly injured soldiers but managing to retreat with 54 lightly damaged IFV's.

Losses at sea:  
UFC: 1 carrier, 2 cruisers, 5 destroyers, 9 frigates, 30 PT boats, 1 submarine, 20 fighter jets and 20 helicopters destroyed, 1800 sailors dead, 3900 wounded but alive, 0 captured by the enemy. 1 dreadnought lightly damaged, 1 cruiser heavily damaged, 3 destroyers lightly damaged, 7 frigates heavily damaged, 18 frigates lightly damaged, 10 PT boats lightly damaged.

NIP: 1 battlecruiser, 1 dreadnought, 2 carriers, 6 cruisers, 14 destroyers, 34 frigates, 2 submarines, 50 PT boats, 10 fighter jets and 60 helicopters destroyed, 9000 sailors dead, 11000 wounded but captured by the enemy.  
2 carriers heavily damaged but captured by the enemy, 3 cruisers heavily damaged but captured by the enemy, 1 cruiser lightly damaged but captured by the enemy, 6 destroyers heavily damaged but captured by the enemy, 4 destroyers lightly damaged but captured by the enemy, 6 frigates lightly damaged but captured by the enemy, 40 PT boats lightly damaged but captured by the enemy, 30 support ships undamaged but captured by the enemy.

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14th of September 2044

India's colonies on both Mars and Luna declare for the Indian Republic after public referendums in each of them. When the now mostly defunct original government of India orders their troops to take the colonies back by force, they refuse and instead oft have their commanders offer the Republic the possibility of them joining the new Republican military.

The Republican military accepts them, happy to have more combat ready forces after their losses the previous day, and withdraws a third of them from the Colonies back to India after several NATO member states(more specifically the Netherlands, Germany and the Vatican) gift them a dozen goods transport freighters and loan them 4 troop transport freighters. Afterwards they replace them with injured soldiers that can patrol a somewhat peaceful colony but are too injured to fight well for longer periods of time in an active warzone.  
Once this is done they restart a steady supply line between their territory on Earth and their colony with the newly gained bulk goods transports from NATO, with the Republics military leadership vowing that they will find a way to pay back the NATO member states for all that they have done for them.

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16th of September 2044  
After they gain the re-enforcements, have resupplied and devised a new battle strategy, the combined NATO and Republic forces march onward, now a total of 55000 troops strong, as the main force. The Republic provide 12000 troops and 1700 IFV's, with all of the Republics troops being mechanised infantry forces, while the NATO provides the remaining 43000 troops.  
Of these troops 30000 are mechanised infantry with 4000 IFV's, 3400 tank crew with 680 tanks, with the remaining 4600 soldiers being spread out over many different branches including the artillery units with 300 artillery pieces, 200 anti-air units with 2 operators each, 140 anti-tank units with 2 operators each, air-force units with 50 helicopters and 38 fighter jets, with all remaining troops being support personnel.  
Meanwhile behind them a second force consistent of 12000 Republic troops with all of them being infantry and 8000 NATO personnel, 50 of them being tank crew with 10 tanks, 400 of them being mechanised infantry with 50 IFV's, 150 anti-air units with 2 operators each, 3250 regular infantry units and lastly 4000 NATO employed contractors, medical personnel and truck drivers to not only deliver and distribute supplies to liberated regions but also to repair damages caused by the war.  
That day they only meet some enemy scouts and sniper units, with skirmishes having very low casualties on both sides, but slowing the army down somewhat and instead of the projected 140 kilometres they only cross 120 kilometres.  
One advantage of the fact that they are now fully mechanised is that all troops can move around much faster than before, though they are somewhat slowed down by the artillery, which while faster than the infantry still isn't the same speed as the IFV's or the tanks.  
NATO and Republic: 0 Tanks, 5 IFV's, 0 artillery pieces, 0 anti-air units, 0 anti-tank units, 0 helicopters, and 0 fighter jets destroyed, 50 soldiers dead, 0 soldiers captured by the enemy, 30 lightly injured soldiers that will be combat effective again within a week. 2 IFV's heavily damaged, 5 IFV's lightly damaged.  
NIP: 18 IFV's destroyed, 125 soldiers dead, 50 lightly injured soldiers that managed to retreat back to their own territory with 7 lightly damaged IFV's will be combat effective again within a week.

17th of September 2044  
On this day, they reach multiple towns and a city with light NIP forces presence, who only seem to be fighting a rear-guard action to try to delay the Republic and NATO advance. The NATO, fearing a trap, does actually slow their troops down somewhat and searches each area for enemies with extreme scrutiny before moving on.  
At the end of the day they have liberated an area of 80 kilometres, a significantly smaller amount then what was hoped, but the caution pays off in causing there to be only a handful of deaths, though the number of injuries is in the hundreds.

Losses:  
Republic and NATO: 1 tank, 10 IFV's, 0 artillery pieces, 0 anti-air units, 0 anti-tank units, 0 helicopters, and 0 fighter jets destroyed, 85 soldiers dead, 200 soldiers heavily wounded, 250 lightly wounded, 25 IFV's heavily damaged, 6 tanks and 30 IFV's lightly damaged.

NIP: 70 IFV's and 10 anti-tank units destroyed, 940 soldiers dead, 50 soldiers heavily injured but captured by the enemy, 150 soldiers lightly injured but managed to retreat back to friendly territory with 20 lightly damaged IFV's.

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18th of September 2044  
Wanting to know just why the enemy is fighting a retreating battle ever since the 13th of September, the NATO forces send the UFC first space flotilla to do orbital scouting of the area. The flotilla relies back grim news to headquarters, the NIP has been preparing large fortifications at the city that was the expeditions final target, with an army of at least 150000 soldiers stationed there, at least a thousand tanks, thousands of IFV's, hundreds of anti-tank and anti-air units and a completely unknown amount of artillery.  
There was relatively little in the way of an air-force, which seem to all have relocated to the Northern front to fight the SIP, CCP and old government forces, not only that but they seem to actually have forced the first two of those factions in a stalemate while having the last one on the verge of collapsing since they are now besieging their final known base. Meanwhile large amounts of troops are on the road from the area the NATO and Republic forces have yet to capture, numbering in the tens of thousands.  
While the fighter jets are sent forward to bombard large amount of enemy forces in the open, the remaining force begin a quick march North, while re-enforcements are sent in from already liberated areas. They stop for the day after having gained another 80 kilometres and are now 40 kilometres away from the opposing headquarters, while all throughout the day the recon vehicles and helicopters have been in skirmishes with enemy forces.  
Meanwhile the fighter jets having decimated a large number of enemy armoured divisions, though at the cost of some losses due to camouflaged enemy anti-air units. After they reach their new line the troops will stay there to resupply and wait for their incoming re-enforcements.

Losses  
NATO and Republic: 0 tanks, 25 IFV's, 0 artillery pieces, 0 anti-air units, 0 anti-tank units, 2 helicopters, and 9 fighter jets destroyed, 250 soldiers dead, 100 soldiers heavily wounded, 250 lightly wounded, 15 IFV's heavily damaged and 40 IFV's lightly damaged.

NIP: 165 tanks, 90 IFV's, 25 anti-air pieces, 0 anti-tank units and 0 artillery destroyed, 1500 soldiers dead, 0 soldiers captured by the enemy, 200 heavily injured and 100 lightly injured soldiers but managing to retreat to the city with 50 lightly damaged IFV's.

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21st of September 2044  
After gaining re-enforcements, the combined NATO-Republic force is now 165000 soldiers strong, with 45000 of them being Republic soldiers with 1400 Republic IFV's and 50 artillery pieces. Meanwhile the 120000 strong NATO force with 6000 IFV's, 1200 tanks, 400 artillery pieces, 250 anti-air units, 250 anti-tank units, 45 fighter jets, 85 helicopters and hundreds of support vehicles.  
More reconnaissance and the use of the first A.I. serving as an intelligence agent gives them a more exact number of enemies: roughly 220000 enemy soldiers, with 300 tanks, 1500 IFV's, 250 artillery pieces, 650 anti-tank units, 250 anti-air units and no enemy aircraft in the centre of the defensive position, the city Bangalore.  
Another 210000 soldiers, 500 tanks, 3800 IFV's, 230 artillery pieces, 150 anti-air units and 300 anti-tank units were spread out over the countryside forming a light defensive line, said line spread from Madras on one end to Bangalore in the middle, with Mangalore as the end on the other side. While possibly easy to break through, any attempt to do so would also trap you in one of the killing fields created by the overlapping fields of fire from the large amount of enemy artillery.  
The good news: most of the remaining enemy tanks, artillery pieces and anti-tank guns are either older models or damaged pieces, making them less dangerous then the ones used during the battle on the 13th of September.  
The bad news is that the NIP has been fortifying the lynchpin of this position ever since the loss of the first battle against the NATO, and the entire city is surrounded by a network of bunkers, trenches, minefields, machine gun nests and any other way that the NIP could find to strengthen the defences.  
The actual chance of them taking the city by force with their current numbers against an enemy that outnumbers them without losing at least half of their own troops is considered nihil, and as such high command starts trying to devise a strategy to win without such extraordinarily high losses. In the meantime the artillery on both sides is bombarding the other sides positions whenever they can, while skirmishes occur between snipers of both sides.  
Small scale skirmishes also occur between mechanised forces from both sides, however with their superior numbers, vehicles and air support the NATO and Republic forces win most of these with relative ease.

Losses  
NATO and Republic: 9 tanks, 80 IFV's, 0 artillery pieces, 0 anti-air unit, 3 anti-tank units, 5 helicopters, and 0 fighter jets destroyed, 350 soldiers dead, 650 soldiers heavily injured, 750 soldiers lightly injured, 15 tanks lightly damaged, 35 IFV's heavily damaged and 70 IFV's lightly damaged.  
NIP: 40 tanks, 230 IFV's, 5 anti-air pieces, 8 anti-tank units and 1 artillery piece destroyed, 2400 soldiers dead, 0 soldiers captured by the enemy, 250 lightly injured soldiers but managing to retreat to the city on foot after their IFV's are destroyed. Another 300 soldiers heavily injured and 800 lightly injured due to bombardments on the city.

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22nd of September 2044  
NATO high command has devised a new strategy, instead of going straight through, they just use their naval and air superiority to their advantage by landing a large amphibious assault 70 kilometres behind enemy lines, to surround enemy forces, cut off their supply line and draw away troops from the main front to weaken their defences even more.  
For this operation they gather the second, third and fourth UFC fleets and quickly turn a large number of captured NIP ships into troop transports. They also prepare a number of paratroopers for a combat drop done from the carriers.  
While NATO sends 150000 troops to do this and keeps the remainder of their army back on the defensive, the Republic meanwhile sends all the re-enforcements they can up North to strengthen the main army, in this case 20000 more soldiers, mainly infantry with 200 repaired IFV's that were damaged in previous battles added in.

…

Ok first things first for those who think I'm focusing too much on specific countries, this is partially because of the fact of how I wrote the first few chapters of this story. I now need to realistically make humanity stronger then canon ME humanity. (Which is actually extremely easy to do, it would literally be harder to realistically try to create a version of humanity close to or below ME capabilities. As in close to impossible unless I have them suffer either a MAD scenario level nuclear war or a global synthetic rebellion that makes them fear technology so much they will revert to a pre-industrial society.)

But somehow still weak enough that they won't be able to just say 'fuck it' and decide to just rampage their way through Citadel space untill they hold both the Council and Palaven hostage, then forcing the Council to have humanity as the fourth council race from that moment on (a lot harder, after some research it turns out most ME weapons are only about as good as modern firearms only with the ability to carry around a much larger amount of ammo. Throw 140 years of developement on those weapons and in a realistic battle where humanity has both advanced and found the Prothean base on Mars... yeah its going to be like watching an army with German ww1 gear that has a competent commander try to fight the modern German army that also has a competent commander... good luck Citadel Council, it was nice knowing you, welcome new overlords of the Galaxy, humanity.)

However one of the other problems I wrote myself into is that I somehow realistically need to make China, the USA and the European Union the main powers. While making those three the main powers isn't too much of a problem since they well actually currently are the worlds main superpowers… the problem is more that I somehow need to create a version in which India isn't added to that list for one reason or the other. This means that I needed to write a scenario in which option A: India experienced either mass emigration of close to 50% of their population, option B: had little power to no power in space and would only be powerful on Earth itself or option C: were it is torn in two by a massive civil war the effects of which continue untill shortly before, during or even after the first contact war.

The third problem that I wrote myself into is that somehow an equal sized Turian flotilla with an incompetent commander was able to still fight on equal ground against a human flotilla that did have a competent commander, even though humanity would realistically have so much better armour and offensive weaponry that no matter the Turian advantage in shields we would still be able to fight them on equal foot with extreme ease, especially since all human ships would have secondary weaponry that would just bypass enemy shields and rip them to shreds if it ever came into knife fighting range.

Then we come to the fourth problem: just how the Turian ground invasion is ever going to work at all since the humans should have ground-based laser anti-ship weapons that can cut frigates in half in seconds, which is especially dangerous considering the council races in Mass Effect cannot bring anything larger then a frigate into the atmosphere of most planets without it heavily damaging the ship.

Then we come to the fifth problem: just how am I going to convince people that Belgium, Great Britain and the Netherlands can actually stand a chance in a cold war against half the world, even if they have the secret support of European Union, African Union and Oceanic Union members if the war turns hot?

Ok admittedly that last one is relatively simple, even on their current course they actually can. With how Trump is crashing the US economy (the biggest in the world currently) and how the Dutch have been using their high level of technological advance in the agricultural and terraforming sector, they will probably take over the USA's leadership spot on the food export list.

The Dutch are currently the second largest exporter of food and seventh largest agricultural giant world-wide. Considering the US is currently the first largest exporter and Trump fucked up pretty much everything that could be fucked up in this fiction, who do you think will make the most money in a world that's getting overcrowded and is heading towards a giant famine, and who will be hired to terraform area's on other planets?

You guessed it the Dutch, especially since they also have the full support of 80% of the world's top economies behind them (with how 16 of the 20 largest economies world-wide currently are part of the EU, with Great-Britain and the Netherlands also as part of that list) and have literally been terraforming land to actually enable themselves to farm crops for close to a millennium (look up the term 'Dutch Poldering' if you do not believe me).  
This together with the fact that the Dutch and British have always been among the world's best overall sailors, explorers, naval combatants and merchants, its actually not that unrealistic if the USA doesn't pull its head out of its own ass fast enough and India falls into a large scale civil war like in this story then becomes divided between different groups due to the effects of said civil war.

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China might be a major power but 90% of their equipment has extreme quality control issues, which in space means that outside of cost-effectiveness they really have no way to compete with anyone else since anyone with even the slightest bit of care for either their public image or the survival of their employees will go for safer products from other countries that don't have a chance of breaking down at a moment were such a failure would have lethal consequences.

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Space isn't a place where if something fails people grumble a bit, complain to the person they bought it from then buy a new one. Space is the place where if anything fails you're dead in minutes at best, seconds at worst. This causes themselves and North Korea to be the only governments likely to use their ships unless they discover something that makes up for literally all quality control issues, which in the story is Mass Effect.

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I solve the third problem thusly: the human ships would for the most part have been Chinese ships, which rely on their shields much more then anyone else and whom also try to stay away from the opponent as far as possible because they are trained with the idea of facing an opponent like the Dutch, Belgian or British ships, which can wreck them in less then 2 hits if they actually manage to get in close. Because of this the commanding officer tried to use standard mass effect strategy: stay away, and have what is essentially a space born sniper/artillery duel.

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This would then play right into the hands of the Turians, who are way more experienced then the Chinese with countering such a style of fighting, and also takes advantage of their better shielding. However, because the Chinese ships have both better armour and are lead by an actually competent commander who will thus also use things like FTL repositioning, they were still heading to mutual destruction untill desolas shows up.

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Fourth problem is also countered relatively easily, Shanxi was a relatively new colony, causing it to only have one well defended city, the capital and even then not everything that is normally on a world was there yet (Anti-orbital canons, ODP stations, etc.) because the only real danger that they could know about would come through the already explored and activated mass relay as far as they knew, meaning that a small defence fleet should be enough to deal with them.

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Also if anybody is annoyed with me about the size of the India Civil war part, while it isn't even finished, my main thing is this: that conflict will essentially be the thing that determines how the world is shaped until the discovery of Mass Effect, will also be the first large scale war humanity has while it already has extraplanetary colonies and a small but capable fleet in space.  
Lastly also the thing that will show the world the power of an unbroken NATO without the USA in it and as I already told earlier I needed a big conflict that broke a world power to make the whole premise of this story work while not making the conflict drastic enough that Humanity will by flying UNSC level ships by the time the first contact war starts.


End file.
